Our Hopeful Home: Easy DIY Pottery Barn-inspired Sparkly NOEL

December 13, 2012

Today I'd like to share with you a REALLY easy, inexpensive Christmas decor craft. I came across this project over at Imparting Grace and just knew I had to try it. Seems that Pottery Barn NOEL wall art is on sale now for a mere $99.00 (originally $149.00).

Pottery Barn

They designed the holiday wall decor with the same graphic style used by the U.S. Postal Service for its first Love postage stamp in 1973. I actually remember the stamp {I was little, in case any of you were wondering}, and I used to work in Center City Philly right near the famous Love statue. So this project has a little bit of nostalgia going for me.

For starters, I purchased some paper mache letters from JoAnn's at less than $2.00 each. They are 3-D and measure 8 inches by 5 inches.

Then I bought some FolkArt "Extreme Glitter" acrylic paint in Silver, at some ridiculously low price on sale, like .45 cents or something like that.

Then I used two coats with one of my smaller paintbrushes (bristles were about 1 1/2 inches long by 1 inch wide total). I am in love with this paint! After the first coat I was a bit worried, but once it dried it looked gorgeous! I originally thought that I would have to use Glitter Mod Podge but I was totally able to skip that step. You all probably know about this crafty paint already, but I was thrilled to find it! And I like the glittery silver much better than Pottery Barn's original boring brown.

After it was completely dry, I used my E-6000 glue to glue the letters together the way I wanted. Then, taking advice from Richella's tutorial, I also glued some balsa wood strips to the back of the letters, kind of shoring them up and making sure they stayed together. You can see Richella's photos for exactly how to do this. Your local hardware store should sell the balsa wood in 3-foot strips. I paid about $3.00 total for 2 strips.

I haven't totally decided where I'm going to display it, but I put it in my foyer (caution, the foyer's a work in progress) so I could take a few pictures to share with you today.

I know, it doesn't really go with the vintage wire planter, I kind of just shoved it in there. But the foyer has the absolute best light in my house for taking pictures. I haven't shared my Christmas mantel because I can't get a good shot of it. The lighting's so horrible in my family room !