✥DIY Anthro Zinc Letter w/Foil✥

A few little issues at hand. We finally had a sunny afternoon- but alas it was too windy to spray paint off my third floor balcony. I currently have 5 unfinished projects around the living room and kitchen. This drives me crazy. I'm a "1 and done before you move on" type a gal.

Now, onward to a real, live, actual completed project.

Can you believe it?

Typography has been huge for awhile now. I bought this 12' cardboard B from JoAnn's almost a month ago. I originally planned on doing a moss covered PB inspired  look, but after sitting with the idea for awhile it didn't feel like me. I think I like to look at other people's, but it's not really something I love.
Does this ever happen to you? It's hard sometimes to see all these good ideas and then edit them down to what you would chose if you had to pay full price for it.

Longest intro ever, but I decided I wanted a metallic letter. Something that looks like steel, not fake paint steel. ;) Anthro has these sweet Zinc ones- prices range from 18-98 bucks.

There are several tutorials online for faux zinc painting-mostly a black or blue base with silver paint on top.

I wanted to experiment with something else.
I used aluminum foil, putting shiny side towards the cardboard and mod podged it on.

For a good final result you want to do the edges first and you want to make sure they are well adhered- no bubbles!
 As you can see, I did the top first and then the edges and did NOT like it. Fail!
So plan B- edges first, then top.


First: Put a sheet of foil, shiny side up, on a cutting board, then put the letter on top of that. Then cut around the letter with the knife. Remove the letter and carefully finish cutting through the foil wherever needed. Make sure you use a new blade and use a ruler for the straight portions to get a clean cut. You don't want the foil to crumple. I have heard from others that if you handle the foil a lot or if it's not cut out carefully then the end result won't look right.
  Once the foil letter is cut out, it can be laid on top of the cardboard letter. I sealed it with a coat of mod podge over the whole thing.

Note: if the aluminum foil was wrinkled from handling it or from cutting it out your results will look like an aluminum foil letter! NOT a zinc one!

I had some wrinkling when I applied the mod podge, a similar effect to when you use it with paper. This light wrinkling is fine and adds to the textured look of real zinc.

After the Mod Podge I wish I could say I was 100 percent stoked with the result, but at this point I thought it looked too plain.

I dry brushed a little black paint on- and then kicked myself. Did I just end up faux painting after all that?
Yuppers.

This is the end result.
Now I'm happy with it- amazingly, it does look like metal. That layer of mod podge changed the feel of the aluminum foil tremendously- in a good way!

If you go to the Anthropologie site and click on the zinc letters, then zoom in you can see the texture is very similar.

Yay!

Thanks for looking!
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