When I first started my wedding planning many moons ago, there were a ton of DIY projects that I wanted to do. One project in particular that I loved were the DIY initial wreaths for the church door. Basically they are styrofoam letters covered in flowers and has a ribbon attached. Seems pretty simple, right?
I have worked with styrofoam many times and figured this would be an easy project. Below are props that I made for my collegiate chapter’s step show. I made that 8 foot tall elephant in the background completely out of styrofoam, so I’m no stranger to the stuff.
I cut styrofoam in a super secret way that I’m going to share with you. The secret to cutting styrofoam is using a sharp knife that will flow very easily. To get a knife of that caliber you have to use an electric carving knife. Yep, the kind that you use to cut turkey at your Thanksgiving dinner. I have the Black and Decker one from Wal-Mart. Cost about $10, but it does the trick. It will allow you to cut any shape and have very smooth lines or curves if you need them.
So I blew up my letters to about the size I wanted them. Glued them to the styrofoam and cut them out. This is the product that I produced.
I knew that it really wasn’t what I wanted, but I figured the flowers will make them look better. However, I was kinda wrong. I didn’t like the way they turned out at all once the flowers were on and Mr. Chocolate Chip didn’t like them either. He said that the “L” looked like a little man dancing. As amusing as that was, I was very disappointed that my project failed. It was not the first project to fail, but this one I figure I had in the bag.
So they aren’t the beauties that I was hoping for. I kind of know what went wrong. I used styrofoam from a craft store. It didn’t really cut the way I thought it would. In the past, I have always used industrial styrofoam from home improvement stores and it has always worked without any problems. I decided not to use it this time because that type of styrofoam is extremely flammable and with weddings there are always candles around. I’m not sure if I will re-do the project because it requires a lot of flowers and I’m running out of time!
I don’t think they look so bad…
How do you get the flowers to stick to it? I was thinking maybe you should use the kind of styrofoam that the florists use. The green kind they use t arrange flowers with. Just a thought…
If you want to take much from this paragraph then you have to apply such methods to your won blog.
The Spanish targets came late, within the last 20 minutes, from Mario Gaspar
of Villarreal after which a second from Arsenal’s Santi Cazorla, and so they always felt
like they might come.
10:46 AM
Cool idea, the top image of the “S” looks very good as well as the “L & V”. Rather than cutting them by hand, I thought that you would have been able to source commercial cut letters online. Also most styrofoam/polystyrene foam contains a fire retardant, well in Ireland it does.
If you painted the letters the same colour as the flowers it wouldn’t matter too much if their was a little gap.
Good Luck.