Love Letters

Is it just me or do stores put out their Valentine’s Day decorations at 12:01 AM on December 26^th? I mean, give the Christmas clearance a chance first! It’s so annoying isn’t it? You’ve barely put away one set of decorations and here “they” are, asking you to put out a whole new set of decorations for a holiday that isn’t even all that significant and really that can only legitimately stay out for two weeks out of the year. So. Annoying.

And with that—I present to you—A Valentine’s Day craft! Oh, come on. You know you want to.

Remember back in December when Natalie put together those awesome, PB knock-off Noel letters? Well, I was a little bit jealous. Okay, a lot jealous. But with everything else that was going on at the holidays I just couldn’t find the time to craft any for myself. But I was looking at those letters, with its “O” and “E” and “L” and the wheels started turning.

One game of scrabble later and I had a full blown Valentine craft on my hands! Using the same instructions Nat used, I crafted the L-O-V-E out of chipboard letters, hot glue, and small strips of cardboard for stability. I used craft paint to give them their adorable, red-and-white hue.

Once both sides were dry, I laid the letters out to get the layout I wanted. Using hot glue on the edges, I glued each piece together. Cut thin strips of cardboard (we used a leftover box from an Amazon order) to secure the backs. It doesn't seem like much but it really does the trick for making these sturdy!

Learning from Nat’s first go with this project, I made sure to paint the backside of my letters, in case I ever wanted to stand them up in front of a mirror, like it is here on the mantle in my study. If you get close, you can see the cardboard pieces, but if you’re that close to the decorations on my mantle then you’ve got other problems in my book. J

I adore them. I really do. And I don’t care if that’s cheesy or if they can only appropriately* stay up for two weeks. This craft was too easy and too cheap to pass up. LOVE it.

*I say appropriately because I’m sure that’s what Emily Post would want you to do, but I don’t know Emily and she’s not coming to my house so my letters are up in January and staying there until February 15^th SO THERE.

Please ignore the otherwise barren state of my mantle. I am in a post-holiday decorating slump. Still trying to decide which direction I'm going to go in this room!

The CopyCat Rundown:

Total Time: If you include paint drying time, 2 hours total. I painted and did other things, and then came back to it, so it was really only a few minutes here and there.

Total Cost: The letters were $0.99 each on sale at Hobby Lobby. Craft paint was also $0.99 at Hobby Lobby. I had everything else I needed, so $6 total and I have lots of paint left over for other projects.

Would we do this craft again? There are plenty of four-letter word combos we’d like to try (no, not any of those four letter words! Get your mind out of the gutter!) Half the fun is figuring out which words go with which seasons!

Credit: Original credit goes to Sarah at Life Sweet Life for her NOEL letter inspiration. And I have to give a shout out to my girl Nat for inspiring ME to give my own rendition of this project a try!