Fun Letter Book Ends

I'm currently underway with a massive reorganization of my desk. Which is taking a lot longer than I had planned, but I keep telling myself its okay. I'm figuring out how I want everything to be, so that I don't ever have to run into this problem again.

So far the only part I really have organized so far is a small cluster of books, assorted notebooks, and binders.

(I think I wrote about it before and called it my little corner of happiness). And I thought I would eventually get around to make bookends for it (or rather make Mike make some for me out of scrap wood!), when I stumbled across this instagram post from One Good Thing by Jillee.

I instantly fell in love with it and knew I had to try to make some of my own!

The Project

Make some fun letter bookends!

Instructions from One Good Thing by Jillee

Results

So I know that Jillee recommends cutting out the front panel of the cardboard letters, but I decided to cut out the back panel of the letters. (And I also used a box cutter instead of an x-acto knife.)

And here's what the inside of cardboard letters look like (just in case you were wondering)

Once I had the back off both letters, I used my hot glue gun to seal around all the edges. (I wasn't taking any chances for the sand to leak out). And since I live in Florida, Blue and I gathered up some sand from the volley ball court to use in the letters. (instead of craft sand that is!)

Since the sand came from outside, I decided it would be a good idea to sift out leaves, roots or whatever else was in there! Naturally Blue was there to help!

(And no it wasn't cold when we sifted the sand, but Blue insisted he was cold and had to wear his sweater and pants.)

I wasn't exactly sure how much sand I was going to need, so I just filled up a small green bucket full. (I just liked that it had a pour spout for easy letter filling! And I may actually steal the bucket for my crafts!) In the end I think I only used about 1/3 of the bucket to fill both letters. (So Blue and Lion had plenty of sand to play with!)

Next I over hot glued the backs of my letters on, so I had to hot glue a little extra across the bottom, so the letters would stand up straight.

Once I was satisifed that the letters would stand up straight and all the holes were sealed shut, I moved onto covering my letters.

Jillee went with card stock to cover her letters, but I decided to use fabric instead. So I simply traced my letter onto the fabric and then gave myself and extra inch the whole way round.

This worked some what. I used the scraps to fill in the holes that occurred. And I used spray adhesive to glue the fabric to the letters and then used mod podge over top.

And then I left them to dry over night.