In the Cozy Minimalist class, I learned that plants breathe life into the room.  My family room is land locked and light deprived.  Real plants wouldn’t survive a week in this space, so a little creativity is in order. (The plants in the picture are fake IKEA plants.  Cute…but too small for the space?  I’m looking for a frugal way to overflow that shelf with green.)

After some looking around pinterest, I thought a moss covered letter  on the new painted fireplace would be perfect.  The space above my fireplace isn’t huge–22 inches total.  So I opted with a 15 inch letter.  I could have gone SUPER frugal and cut a letter out of cardboard.  In the end I paid $5 to have a ready made letter because I wanted the depth.  you can see the side of it from the front door and it looks better to be thick and sturdy.

The fireplace still looks bare, so I’m thinking about garland options. Maybe I’ll make this when we drive to Colorado. Or this.

This project took me 1 hour including driving to Hobby Lobby to get the letter $5 (50% off from $9.99.) And the moss sheet $6 (40% off coupon from $9.99.)  I also used scissors and a marker.  The project would have gone faster, but those sheets are extremely sticky and I kept getting caught in it like a mouse in a sticky trap.  I regret my decision not to film it, because I think it would have gone viral for how ridiculous it was….you’ve been warned.

Unfold your moss sheet and place your letter in the center.  I drew the lines on it with the marker and cut along it with scissors.  Then peeled off all the paper backing.

I pressed the letter onto the sticky moss.  At this point, it’s good to mention that you want the RIGHT side of your letter face down.  This is pretty important if your letter is directional, like a B.  Thank goodness that C’s are good both directions because I wasn’t super careful.  As you go, SAVE YOUR SCRAPS.  You’ll need them until the very end.  Then if you want, you can throw the mess away.

Then I started pressing up the moss and sticking it around the outside, trimming off the excess so it would lay flat agains the wall.  Where it curved, I snipped it to the letter then folded it up overlapping the excess while keeping it smooth. The cool thing about this project is the moss is so forgiving.  If you end up with a hole you can just stick a scrap in it and no one will be able to tell.

To go around the inside curves I snipped it like the outside, but this time instead of overlapping it left gaps of triangles. 

I just cut little triangle scraps and stuck them in to fill in the gaps.

The corner ended up with a triangle flap.  I just cut it off flush.

TaDa!

I went super fancy on the hanger and hot glued a paper clip to the back. It’s such a lightweight piece that a paperclip is just the right thing.