Season 6 Week 3 Projects: Styrofoam

It’s a great week of Styrofoam projects! Scroll down and vote for your favorite!

Number 1: Real Steel Meets Styrofoam

Funky, cool, contemporary, industrial, modern, shiny, STYROFOAM!

All these words describe these faux stainless steel letters. It's not always easy to find personalized room decor that boys will like, but these look great in my sons bedroom, and he loves them.

This is how to make your own.

• Print your word of choice in any font you'd like onto cardstock and cut out the letters
• Trace the letters onto your sheet of Styrofoam
• Using a hot Styrofoam cutter (or a knife if you don't have one of those), patiently cut each letter from the foam
• For the look of textured steel, I used bubblewrap. Simply trace the paper letters, just a tiny bit smaller than the original, onto bubble wrap and cut them out

• Spray paint the Styrofoam letters and bubblewrap letters with a metalic spray paint. There are lots of brands and colors available to choose from
• Attach the bubblewrap letters to the foam ones, using a low temp hot glue gun
• To give the edges of the letters a nice finished edge, outline the edges with an all purpose caulk. I felt like I was icing cupcakes at this step.
• When the caulk is completely dry, give the letters one final coat of the metallic spray paint. Voila! You're finished!

To hang, I simply used small finishing nails, and stuck the foam right onto them. These letters are lightweight, and easy to handle. You can make them as large or as small as you'd like. I printed mine in 550 size font, and cut them from a large 2 inch wide Styrofoam sheet. There are many width options available in these sheets.

These faux steel letters would work well in a contemporary nursery, playroom, and even kitchen. The sky is the limit as to what words, sizes, and colors you can create!

Number 2: Styrofoam Picture Puzzle

Thanks for all the votes! Wow! Round 3!

So Styrofoam had endless possibilities...but I looked all around at craft stores, Wal-Mart, then ended up at Lowe's, where I found this giant 4'X8' sheet of Styrofoam. I have always wanted some big wall art, and I love to take pictures, so I combined the two. I had Office Depot print off a black and white engineering copy as big as they could. My husband (using a jig saw) helped me cut puzzle pieces out of cardboard, then we traced them onto the Styrofoam. Next, using the jig saw again, we cut the Styrofoam (fyi- it was soooo much easier than cutting the cardboard), then traced the pieces onto the picture. We cut the picture out. Finally, using spray glue, we glued the pictures onto the Styrofoam.

The final picture is 4ft X 3ft. I used some blue Ticky-tack to hold it up, along with a few tacks!

I love the final result! The styrofoam was superlight, and easy to work with. I would use it again for other projects.

Number 3: Foam Deer Head Plaque and Gallery Wall

I am not going to lie this project was by far the most challenging for me. I have never used Styrofoam before, but I knew what I wanted to attempt to do with it. My gallery wall in my study was on my to do list to completely do over. This was the perfect time! I took two rectangular pieces of styrofoam and glued them together. I then cut out a plaque shape.

I then drew an outline of a deer head with antlers. I also taped four pieces of faux wood scrapbook paper together and cut it out in the shape of plaque. I then hot glued all pieces on foam plaque and added a ribbon trim around the edge. I also used the ribbon to hang the plaque with. Since styrofoam is so light, it only took glue to keep the ribbon in place.

The empty frame is going to be filled with a family picture (didn't want to give myself away ;). I drew the tree picture with pastels. I framed fabric in two frames and cut out an ampersand to put on top of one of the fabric pieces. I hot glued scrap paper onto the S and also painted the chevron underneath the S. Finally, I used wallpaper to do the script matting on one of the frames.

I absolutely LOVE how this turned out! Don't you just love the deer head trend right now?! It looks perfect in my study!

Number 4: Santa and Neve

A long time ago, when Santa was young,

(Before the days of Facebook and Twitter),

he was making all the toys himself,

but he was not a quitter.

As Christmas Eve drew nearer and nearer still,

Santa knew he needed an aid.

He looked high and low for the perfect person,

until finally, he was dismayed.

Then along came Neve, the kindly elf,

whose name means "snow" in Italian.

Santa was surely grateful

and displayed his satisfaction.

Santa and Neve became close friends,

of that, I am sure.

Now this rhyme is over,

so I'll no longer be a bore.

Some Styrofoam balls, felt, pipe cleaners, and pom poms were all it took to make these little guys. (Full tutorial to follow on my blog after this week's winners are announced!)

I think all of my family and friends will be getting a set of their very own this year. They were too fun to make!

Number 5: Coffee Filter Wreath

I made it to Round 3! Oh my goodness! Unbelievable! Yay!

I'm so honored to be in this competition with such talented ladies,

& to make it this far in the competition is truly humbling! Thank you!

When I heard that Round 3 was Styrofoam Crafts I was extremely nervous.

I have NEVER used Styrofoam before {well...besides sipping my hot chocolate in!}

I know seriously... and can YOU believe I actually have a craft blog, too??!! Crazy! :)

I have ALWAYS wanted to use coffee filters to make a wreath!

I think they are so pretty! So here's how I made mine! :)

{WARNING: I have never attempted this kind of craft before

so if my instructions are totally not what anyone else would do...that's why! ;)}

What you need:

Styrofoam wreath

2 packages of coffee filters

stick pins (use the ones with the little colored balls on the ends)

ribbon

How I did it:

I laid my Styrofoam wreath form on the table.

Then I stuck my stick pin right through the middle of one coffee filter,

folded my coffee filter up around it & made a "coffee filter dart" in a way. :)

Then I stuck that into my Styrofoam wreath. Kept doing that over & over again.

I tried to stick them as close together as possible.

I did that about 300-400 more times until I had gone all the way around.

FYI: I left the back of my wreath empty so my wreath would lay flat against the wall.

Then I tied a ribbon loosely around the top of my wreath,

& I hung it up on the wall in our master bathroom.

{Love how it turned out!}

It would be an honor to have YOU vote for me!

Good luck to everyone! You are all amazing! :)

Number 6: Biscuit Pop Stands and Holly Pomanders

You've heard of cake pops, right?

Have you heard of biscuit pops?

Perhaps not!

Here is my take on the "everything on a stick trend" ...the biscuit pop!

Now, y'all know that once you have anything on a stick, you have no way to display your creations unless you utilize some styrofoam, right? Right. So I created stands using circular styrofoam pieces to display my biscuit pops on. I used a strong scrapbook paper to cover the styrofoam and then trimmed out the edges with ribbon. The display needed a little green, so I also made accents by utilizing some more styrofoam and creating holly pomanders.

Vote for me and find out my simple technique for inserting the pops into the styrofoam without damaging the paper cover,

and a simple technique for those little ribbon ruffles along with the recipes for:

Lavender, Allspice and Sea Salt Biscuit Pops with Lavender Butter

Cheddar Biscuit Pops with Paprika and Cayenne Butter

Ginger and Pepper Biscuit Pops with White Pepper and Ginger and Nutmeg Butter

These projects are all incredible! How can you pick just one?!