Decorated Letters

This is a super cute craft that I've done several times (for some of my friends, for my little sister, for my old sorority board).  Its pretty much my favorite craft!

I start with plain white letters from Hobby Lobby

source

These are only $2.99 but pretty much every other week they are 50% off and I only buy them when they're on sale so $1.50! These are pretty big (9" according to the site) and are super easy to paint on so I just let my creativity flow!

Sometimes I draw out what my design before starting

And sometimes I just draw out my design on the letter!

This one's gonna be zebra print with a pink outline!!!

For the zebra print, I just looked at a picture of a zebra print pattern on the computer and free handed my own zebra! This is the second zebra print letter I've done. If you notice in the picture there are lines inside the outlines of the stripes, those are on purpose. Last time I did one, I got confused what was supposed to be a stripe and what wasn't so this time I marked it!

After I had my letter all drawn out with zebra print:

Lots of lines!

I started painting!  This is the first time I will have outlined the zebra print so I just made it up as I went (I do that a lot).  I started by painting the black inside the outlines, leaving some space between the paint and the lines I had drawn (I didn't want the stripes to end up too fat and run into each other).

I think this looks pretty cool on its own.

After the black paint was dry, I just got a thin brush and started outlining in hot pink! It took two coats to cover the pencil marks and get a consistent color, but I think it turned out pretty good!

I have also used a thin sharpie, instead of paint, on a letter I just wanted crisp lines on, so there are lots of choices.

Such clean lines!

I love doing these! Here are pictures of some others I have done:

This is to hang in my craft room in my new apartment!

This matches my little sister's bedding

What should I do on my next letter? What's your favorite craft?