Well I've been working on my crafting skills lately for decorating my new place and my latest area to decorate is my mantle above my fireplace. I found these really cute green moss covered letters that some girl on Pinterest had used in her wedding pictures and I thought that would look so cute on my mantle.

So I went to Michaels first since it is 2 seconds from my house and found the green moss in the floral area. The blog said to get a green moss table runner and that is what I thought I had picked up but I found out later I hadn't. Unfortunately Michaels did not have any letters big enough to my liking so I decided to make the trip to Joann Fabrics which is much farther from my house. In reality it's like 10 minutes away but when you live in a town where everything is within 5 minutes, 10 minutes is a big trip. 

Side note: Have I mentioned I worked at Joann's for 4 years when I was in high school? How I never got into crafts before my twenties I'll never understand, especially considering my uber crafty family and my craft store job I used to have. The big plus to working at Joann's for so long is I still remember the areas that items are in so I can navigate my way around craft stores pretty well.

So I go to Joann's and looked in their floral section at the kind of green moss they had and (of course) liked their selection better. So naturally, I bought more and said I will return the one I got from Michaels. The good thing is though the green moss I bought from Joann's was a table runner that the blog who did this craft in the first place had suggested. And I didn't like Joann's selection of letters either...none of them were big enough. And since I'm too stubborn to settle I bought a big piece of styrofoam and decided to cut my own letter. They had a nice styrofoam cutter at Joann's but after seeing it was $25.00 I decided a kitchen knife would work just fine too.

After this I headed to TJ Maxx because I am a serious Maxxinista. My obsession with TJ Maxx, Homegoods, and Marshall's is unreal. I love a good deal and can spend hours in each of the stores. While browsing TJ Maxx I found a silver metal ampersand and literally squealed out loud. I'm quite embarrassing even by myself but whatever. I had been stressing about how in the world I would make an ampersand when I'm not even able to write one on a piece of paper correctly.

So after TJ Maxx I head home to start crafting. Making the B out of styrofoam with a kitchen knife actually wasn't as hard as I thought it might be. I traced the outline with one of those sewing pencils that is like blue chalk on the end, not sure of the proper name for it and just started cutting away and this is what I came up with. 

By the time I had finished cutting the whole thing it looked like I had murdered a snowman but I was pretty impressed with myself. So next I started the gluing the moss. I took the moss table runner out of the package and placed it on top of the B and outlined it to cover the top portion of the B and then hot glued it to the styrofoam. I continued to do this until I had no table runner left. So I had to open the Michaels green moss I bought and realized it wasn't a table runner but pull apart moss you would stick in a vase for decoration. This actually ended up okay because it was fluffier than the table runner so I think it added more depth to the project but it did take longer and I burnt my fingers like 10 times gluing it on. My favorite thing about the green moss is it's really easy to cover up mistakes with just gluing more green moss over it. After about an hour I was finished so I put the finished letter and the ampersand up on my mantle and this is what it looked like...

I thought at the time maybe I could just leave it "B &" rather than "B&B" cause I thought "B&B" would take up too much space and both our initials are B so I thought maybe it'll look okay. Brian, being oh so kind, was like "No one is going to understand." But I left it like that for about 2 weeks until finally one night I looked at it and told Brian that it looks so stupid. And he was like "So you're finally adding another B to our Band (combining B and &)...gotta love him. Anyway, so I decided I didn't want the B's to be the same size but I still wanted it to be bigger than the ampersand. This is when I could not find a B I liked anywhere once again. I feel like I looked everywhere, until one day my mom called me from Tampa. She was at the Joann's I used to work at and was like "they have a paper mache B here that is 12 inches, do you want it? And I just decided to say yes cause I had pretty much given up at this point and really didn't want to carve another B out of styrofoam for some reason. She sent it in the mail and it was PERFECT. At this point I decided not to do the green moss again and instead wrap it with twine so it wasn't too matchy matchy. Here is the B

I remembered that twine was in the beading aisle at the craft store and went to look for it there. All I could find was something called Jute that looked like twine (they could be the same thing, I have no idea) so I bought the bigger size that was 500 feet even though I knew that was too much I just didn't want to have to go back to the store.

Wrapping this twine took FOREVER. Like I thought it would never end. Thankfully ABC family was having one of their Harry Potter weekend marathons so I spent Saturday and Sunday afternoon watching that and wrapping twine. I think it was more difficult because the letter B has so many sharp corners that you maneuver around. Here is the letter when I first started...

But finally, Sunday around 5 I finished and was so happy with the outcome. It took a lot of patience though. 

 I think it turned out great, it's not perfect by any means but I like the imperfection of it. I loved it on the mantle as well.

Now all I want is a big mirror to place up there and it will be complete. I'm still searching for the right mirror though and I still need to paint the walls, but that will all happen eventually. Hope everyone is having a great day! Guess what day it is?! It's hump day! (Love that commercial)