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!