Anthro-esq Letters

I love most things Anthropologie. 

And I've always loved these zinc letters and have always wanted one...or several. 

I was browsing in the Paper Source (love this store) and came across their "craft letters". I snagged a lower-case "f" in honor of our last name. I knew I wanted to experiment with it. And for the $3.75 price, I thought it was a bargain! 

I bought some silver paint at the craft store for, get this, $0.59 cents. Practically giving it away, right? I was on a mission to make my "craft letter" to look like one of Anthro's zinc letters. So off I went to paint the cardboard letter with my silver paint.

After 2 coats of the silver paint, it looked like this. Not bad! But it was a bit too...bright.

I needed to tone down the silver paint a bit. So I took some brown paint that I already had and watered it down a bit. I was going to do a "glaze" over the silver paint.

I painted on the watered down paint and then dabbed 

it off with a paper towel. 

This was just the trick to tone down the bright silver paint. It gave the letter more of an aged look and made it look like metal - and not the actual card board. You can see more of the glazed detail here...

I just love the final product!

Here is the project breakdown:

Paper Source Craft Letter.............$3.75

Silver Paint..........................$0.59

Foam paint brush (already had).....$0

Brown glazing paint(already had)...$0

Grand Total...........................$4.34