I’ve always wanted a monogrammed letter for my home… the letter ‘G’, to be exact, for our last name, Griffore! For years and years, I have been looking every time I hit up a Michaels or Winners… but every time that I found one that I really liked, it was just a little bit more money than I wanted to spend on a single letter. Especially when I kept thinking how easy it would be to make one…

Finally the other night, the perfect opportunity to make my very own monogrammed ‘G’ presented itself! Baby Gri-Gri #2, is due to arrive any day now, and we are so excited! So excited, that we decided to purchase a brand new crib for her! Now, purchasing a crib is one thing… putting it together is completely another! However, while my husband was busy putting it together, I couldn’t help but notice all of the beautiful pieces of Styrofoam packaging, that was just begging to be made into something!

Our crazy little helper!

The first thing that I had do was steal the perfect piece of Styrofoam from our crazy little helper, before she completely destroyed it all!

Next I opened up ‘Microsoft Word on my trusty old lap top, and started flipping through different fonts until I found a ‘G’ that I liked to use as a guide. Now if you were really smart, you could just print your ‘G’ out, cut it out, and trace it onto your Styrofoam! However, my printer has been out of ink since the last school year ended, and I can never-ever remember to buy some more – or even remember to put it on my shopping list… So sad, I know! 🙁

Due to our major shortage of printer ink, my crazy little helper and I, had to get a little more creative! We ended up using a marker and a small Styrofoam plate to trace around. We then connected the top part of the ‘G’ to the bottom part, and used a straight edge to finish it up.

The Styrofoam was a little bit tricky to cut, and I found that a paring knife worked best. I kind of used the same technique that I use to carve my pumpkins… push it straight in, and pull it straight out!

After I finished cutting out my letter, it was time to make it pretty! I decided to use twine from the dollar store. It only took me one full roll of twine, plus about a quarter of a roll… so really, less than two-dollars’ worth!

All I did was use a hot glue gun to tack on my twine as I wrapped it, here and there, to help keep the twine in place.

And then, I just kept wrapping, and wrapping, and – wrapping! After my ‘G’ was completely covered in twine, I went back over any “skinny” looking areas, to thicken them up, to keep the overall shape of my letter consistent.

Ta-da! Here it is! Not too shabby, right?! I mean it’s not perfect, but that’s ok… it’s just very rustic looking! And I mean, like it only cost two dollars! You totally can’t beat that!

It turned out just perfect for my Ten-Minute, Two-Dollar Wreath!  

So go ahead, give it a try! And remember, you don’t have to just use twine… try burlap, or your favorite ribbon! Post your pics in the comments below, as I would love to see them! 🙂