ScrapTastic Ideas: Altered Letters for Christmas Presents

Happy Monday!!!!

Well, the good news that it is the end of Monday! I am really excited about this week because I have Christmas parties galore, I'm even hosting one at my house for some of the fire department guys and their significant others. It should be a lot of fun, but I am have to cook and to be honest, I'm not a good cook. Actually, I don't cook at all! It's a good thing some some of my girlfriends are coming to help- thanks Ashley, Meredith and Lauren- without y'all, I might burn my house down, and that wouldn't be easy to explain being married to a firefighter...

Anyway, I wanted to share this really fun and great Christmas gift. I made these altered letters for my girlfriends at work. We always say, every year, that we will not exchange gifts, but sometimes my creative juices get the best of me and I end up making things like these for them!

The letters stand for their last names and I tried to make each letter fit their personality.

Here's a close up of each letter.

Here is a quick run down on how I make my altered letters:

I start by tracing the letter. My trick to this is to use the back side of the paper with the letter backwards for tracing. This way the markings are on the back side of the paper and you don't have to worry about seeing it. Then I cut out the letter right on the inside of the line, although that is really hard to do. The great thing about these, is that it's ok that it's not perfect!

I paint the edge of the letters and then ink the edge of the paper, usually in the same color, however, the edge of the 'S' is painted blue and I inked the paper white and it turned out just fine.

I put on a thick coat of mod podge on the actual letter and then a thick coat of it after I put the paper down. After this dries (usually let it dry overnight), my creative juices have to really kick in, and sometimes it will take me a day or so to think about how I want to decorate the letter. I have been working on these letter for about 2 weeks, only because I needed to think about how I wanted to decorate them... and of course my other projects were starring at me to finish them, too.

If you notice the 'D' is different, that's because I tore paper into small pieces and dipped them into the mod podge and applied them one by one. Yes, it took a long time and it was REALLY messy, but I got the effect I was going for. Aimee will really appreciate my work on her letter, she is one of my scraptastic sidekicks! Here's a link to her blog. Check it out and tell her I sent you! : )

I hope the girls at work love their new letters! I've only made one other altered letter and it didn't turn out near this cute, so I'm not posting it! : )