Easy DIY Glitter Letter {Pottery Barn Knock Off}

I spotted an oversized Glitter letter in the Pottery Barn Kids catalog recently that caught my eye.  It looked like an easy way to decorate a small wall above my little girl’s dresser.

I love that it is glittery (which makes her happy) but still delicate and pretty and not garish.

The price tag from Pottery Barn Kids is $64 which is a little more then I wanted to spend.  So I decided to try to make one of these myself and my total cost for the letter and glitter was $6!  Yeah!

I started out by buying an oversized paper mache letter from Joann’s for $9.99.  I used a 50% off coupon for my purchase, dropping the price to $5.00.  This is such a lightweight letter you can just use a sharp object like a nail to poke a hole in the back.  Then you can hang it once it is all finished easily on a small nail- better to do this first so you aren’t stabbing at the back and banging all your glitter off the front in the process (not that I would know from experience…)

Next it needed to be painted- you might see what you already have on hand.  Spray paint or silver paint is a great option. I actually had this silver liquid gilding paint from Martha Stewart.  I bought this ages ago and have never used it but it gives a metallic look to a surface.  I found it coated really smoothly on the paper mache and gave a subtle sheen to the letter instead of a really bright and shiny finish.

After the liquid gilding dried, I used a paintbrush to spread Martha Stewart glitter glue on the front of the letter.  I decided not to coat the entire letter with glitter because the gilding alone was so pretty.  I just added the glue to the face of the letter and then sprinkled a fine glitter on the top.  Typically I like the Martha Stewart glitter but for this project, I had a fine glitter in a mixture of gold and silver from the Target Dollar Spot that was perfect. Yeah for Target!

So I just laid out a long piece of parchment paper and painted the glitter glue on the face of the letter in even strokes.  Then I sprinkled the glitter on top and gave it a little while to dry.  Next I tipped the letter up to remove excess glitter and folded the parchment paper in half to dump the excess back in the container.  I had ample glitter for this project from the container pictured above.

It actually turned out to be really pretty in person- just the right amount of sparkle.  Since it is so fine, I didn’t notice any issues with glitter getting everywhere.  If you use a thicker glitter you might want to put a top coat on to keep it all in place- there are clear spray paint sealers you can find at home improvement stores.

And viola!  All done and it fits perfectly over her dresser!

So in total, I spent $5 on the letter and $1 on the glitter.  I already had the paintbrushes, glue and gilding liquid, so a total of $6.00 for this project. The guilding liquid is a little more expensive so another option would be to use paint or a spray paint.

Martha Stewart actually makes a metallic craft paint that should be very reasonably priced or I have heard good things about DecoArt Glamour Dust! 

And as for the glue, you can always use Mod Podge if you don’t have glitter glue or any adhesive you do have.  I would be careful with school glue because you don’t want this to turn out clumpy.

So even without any supplies on hand, I would say this letter would still cost about $20 or so with if you had to buy everything.

I think this project would be cute for a child’s room or for a birthday party too!

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And for a little behind the scenes look at how this project really went down at our house ;).  I tried to sneak a little time when my husband had the kids in the pool to get a few projects out of the way.  (This is not a project to do with the kiddos because the gilding liquid is STRONG and it will stain so you need to be super careful.)

I used our ratty old pool equipment cover to paint on and glue on and glitter on and low and behold, 10 seconds into my project I had an audience of little people ;).  Apparently glitter holds a stronger pull to little girls then even a pool on a hot day.

If you give this project a shot let me know how it goes for you!

If you want to see more easy DIY projects for the home, check out my Home Board on Pinterest!