Prepping Your Letter or Number For A Collage - What It Looks Like

Hi there! I hope you had a great week! Besides my iPhone screen breaking and running random programs, I had a great one, too! I am participating in an Instagram challenge this month, called #marchmeetthemaker and I have posted several pictures of myself, my home studio, and the wonderful machine that makes all of our wooden letters, numbers and shapes. Please follow me if you'd like, @matchpointgifts on Instagram.

But I digress - this week I wanted to follow up my last blog post with pictures of an actual project. And I have to start off by saying, I may be wrong about foam brushes. At least for painting the back of my collage letters/numbers, they definitely have upside. One being that they absorb the paint very well and two, you can really get into the nooks and crannies of the letter.

I realized that if I was going to tell people not to use foam brushes, I should at least try one to see what all of the fuss was about - but the jury is still out for me on using foam brushes as a finishing brush. But I digress, again!

So here I go, following my own steps from the last post. I took pictures so that you could follow along, too!

Step 1: Purchase Your Wooden Letter, Number or Shape.
You can purchase your wooden letter or number from www.matchpointgifts.com or in my shop on Etsy, www.matchpointgifts.etsy.com. These letters are thick and you can't get custom fonts in any craft store! So check us out, made in the Carolinas, USA!

I chose a 15 inch letter A in our block font. I'm going to make a collage for my parents, my son's grandparents, of my son, Asher! This style of letter is for sale in our shop for $20.

15 Inch Letter "A", block-style font

Step 2: Choose a Paint Color.

I prefer black for the edges of my collages... and I'll use this example collage to show you why. For this project, I went with Pure Black.

I feel that you can never go wrong with Folk Art paint.

Step 3: Select the Right Brush.

Here is where I have to share my change of heart (I've learned this from watching all of the Political Debates on TV!) Foam brushes are more than ok for this step in this particular project. I used both a gold haired brush (that I thought was too narrow for painting the back, but I couldn't find my wider-bristled brush) and then the foam brush.

It's the battle of the brushes.

Step 4: Paint Your Letter, sides, then back.

This is where the foam brush kind of separated itself from my beloved gold-bristled brush - it seemed to really flow over the unfinished wood, and the foam brush navigated the crevices of the A's cutout and it's block intersections. 

Side view of the painting job.

The bottom photo shows why I don't like to use foam brushes as my "front" of the letter brush - there is a lot of streakin going on. But for the back, it will dry ok.

And we're done! With the back.

So ... a lot of people might think this is all very simple, and it's true. But I want to stress to you, gift recipients are going to turn your collage over - and you want it to have a finished feel. And it's a lot easier to do the back BEFORE you do the collage, please take my word for it!

Next time we will prep the photos and finish this tutorial, so go ahead and pick out 15-20 photos that you would like to use. It's best to print them with a laser printer, but if you don't have one, no worries. I'll walk you through my processes with an InkJet next week.

Happy Collaging!

Crystal