{trulie-scrumptious}: Tute-Sweet Tuesday

Attention All Bloggers!

We are completly THRILLED to have Julia be our {FIRST} Featured blogger on our

Tute-Sweet Tuesday!

The second you see her blog you will fall in Love just like we did..

Not only will you fall in love with her blog,

you will fall in love with Her.. her amazing personality,

her creative masterpiece mind and her adorable little family.

Introducing the one and only Julia.....

Hi-ya. I'm Julia (from Chris loves Julia). You should know, I love him back. The whole thing became official in November of 2008. We are new homeowners and a bit domestic. Chris will cook your socks off and I am a color and design enthusiast. We love writing words, laughing out loud, giving stuff away and collecting more treasures. DIY is the way we roll and then we blog about all of our good and we-learned-from-that adventures. Our best DIY to date? Little Greta, born February 2010--whom we both love.

Chris and Julia

When we were on our anniversary getaway in February-shopping, we stopped in Anthropologie. That was the first bad idea. There's nothing in there I don't love, but there's also hardly anything in there that I feel okay spending THAT MUCH on. You know what I mean? "Oh em gee, loooovvvvveeeee those mugs (or dress, or cardigan, or coat hooks) but whoa--I can't justify spending that on that." Then I came upon oversized zinc letters. These ones:

They weren't crafty looking, they were modern and I totally snapped a picture (second big mistake...I was getting hooked). These puppies are BIG. 25" tall. Anthro had them laying on their side and standing like they were all hanging out and I SO wanted to be a part of the cool kids at that moment. So, I made my 3rd major mistake and picked up a letter. It was big and thick, but surprisingly still light. A "C" and a "J", perhaps laying on her side, would look so cozy propped on a shelf above our bed in front of a painting. I was hooked. I had to haa..... $98!! Nooooooooooo! Okay, I wasn't that surprised, but I was that hurt. Those letters have been haunting me ever since.

It took a few failed attempts before getting it right. Good news, it won't take you 48 hours, a case of carpal tunnel, burned fingertips or even the $98/letter Anthropologie is asking. We now have our own 25" tall, 2" thick HUUUGGGEEE letters propped above our bed and you can, too:

Pretty, huh?

After experimenting with cardboard, foam board, and wood we found the golden ticket: Insulation styrofoam and a jig saw. A BIG sheet of insulation is $15!! It is 2" thick and smooth--perfect for the task.

Chris cut the letters out with the jig-saw and I sanded the edges a little. You can't spray paint styrofoam, so I put a coat of black acrylic paint on this morning:

followed by drybrushing Plaid's Acrylic Craft paint in "Metallic Silver Sterling":

That's it. The dry-brushing over black paint really makes it look metal and brings out any imperfections which makes it look even more cool--so don't fret about that. Now we have zinc-looking oversized letters of our very own! Once the styrofoam was in the house, it was easy-peasy. I would totally do it again, in fact, I might-- we still have half of the insulation board left. Cheap and chic, don't you think?