Kids DIY Letter Decor

Crafting with kids can be a lot of fun, and can sometimes really turn into something quite memorable. This particular craft helped teach my daughter that by using her imagination, she can create anything!! It was also interesting that this project also had some unexpected surprises, which taught her (and reminded me, once again) that even though you might have a "craft fail", you can still turn it around into something even better than you imagined.

This Kids DIY Letter Decor is the kind of project that will entertain kids of any age for hours. It makes for a great rainy day craft, or one that you can use for days when they are just bored.

We found a paper maché letter Z at the craft store for about $3. My daughter loves everything sparkly and shiny, so I got out some Shimmer Poms, Sequins, Peel & Stick Heart Acrylic Jewels, and Acrylic Circle Jewels (from CraftProjectIdeas.com) and used some Elmer's Gel School Glue to attach everything to the letter.

I dumped all the supplies into cups, laid down a mat for her to work on, and told her she had total creative freedom. She was able to easily peel the backing from the adhesive jewels and would add drops of glue to the letter to attach the others.

It took a bit of practice, but she quickly got the hang of adding just enough glue so that it wasn't squishing out everywhere. She's one to not really like getting her hands messy, so this was a big accomplishment! Sadly, the poms wouldn't stick with the glue, so we nixed that idea and stuck with the bling. 

Since the poms weren't sticking, it left quite a bit of empty space and I wasn't so keen about getting out paint at this point. Instead, I got out some Neon Glitter Glue and told her how it works and to have at it!!

She had a lot of fun drawing with the glues and adding some extra sparkle. These glitter glues are the perfect size for little hands, and the neon colors are so fun!!

Then, we had a bit of a glitter glue...explosion. There must have been a plug in the glitter glue bottle and squeezed too hard. We had a good laugh over the whole thing, and then I explained how sometimes things can go very, very wrong when you work on a project, but if you take a minute to calm down and take another look at it, you can fix it!! This mess looked pretty bad, but it didn't have to mean we were done.

Instead, I showed her how to spread the glue out with fingers (and refill the empty glitter glue container with the excess) and that we would make the letter look even better than we planned. Since glitter glue is actually a glue and not just for looks, we could now put all the bling in the glitter glue spread and put the school glue away!

She worked on filling different areas with the glitter glue so that there would be blocks of different colors, then stuck on jewels in the globs. It worked out great and was even easier/faster than the way she was gluing before!!

The glitter glue takes a while to dry, so it was simple to add extra jewels and sequins in areas that needed a little extra bling. Since we had already glued on some jewels before and were already dried, we just used the tips of the glitter glues to go around the gems without a problem.

Since we had so much glue on the letter, we let it dry overnight. It was completely dry in the morning, and my daughter has been so proud of herself!! She put it on display in her bedroom, and it makes me happy to see how much fun she had even though we had a few craft fails.

What are some of your craft fails??

Thanks to our sponsors for the supplies provided in this post. All opinions are my own.