How to Make a Giant Floral Monogram Letter

My favorite single element from the A is for Addalyn party was definitely the large floral A on the center of the table.  

I only spent about $21 on all the flowers for this party, and even had some extras when I was done.  

How is that possible, you ask?  Well, one thing that helped was luck.  The morning I needed to buy flowers, I drove allllll  the way downtown to a wholesale floral market--which had decided to close early that day.  Noooooooo!  Full of frustration, I drove the 25 miles home, and decided to duck into the grocery store about two miles from my home.  And there I found the perfect roses on sale for $6/dozen.  I bought 3 dozen.  I also bought some smaller pink filler flowers.  The color I wanted was actually one that had just expired (though the blooms looked just fine), so they offered to sell me two bunches for $1 each.  Score!  If only I'd stopped there first.

Materials Needed to Make a Large Monogram of Flowers

• thin styrofoam insulation from the home improvement store
• a print out of the letter you want to duplicate, enlarged somewhat
• a marker
• a ruler or other straight edge
• hot glue gun
• paint
• floral Oasis
• flowers

I knew I wanted my A to be in the same font I'd used elsewhere in the party, so I printed out the letter A in a largish font size, and used my ruler to draw a grid over it.  (Fancy ruler, no?  Borrowed from my girls.)

The back side of the foam insulation sheets has handy grid marks printed right there, so it's really pretty easy to transfer the design in a larger scale.

Use a razor blade to cut the basic letter shape out of the styrofoam board. 

Next, cut strips of the foam, and start gluing them to the edges of the letter, using the hot glue gun.    Fill any gaps with hot glue or caulk.  You don't want leaks.

I decided to spray paint my letter gold.  You don't see much of the structure of the letter once the flowers are in, but I wanted anything peeking out to coordinate with my party.  One thing to remember:  use regular acrylic paint where there's raw Styrofoam.  You can spray paint the plastic-wrapped flat surfaces of the insulation sheet, but most spray paint will make raw Styrofoam dissolve.  Oops.  Forgot about that until I'd already started.  Fortunately, I remembered quickly enough that I didn't destroy the whole thing.

Fill the empty cavities of the monogram with wet floral oasis.  It was just like a puzzle--shove a little bit here, trim a little bit there.  

Trim your roses nice and short, and just start pushing them in the Oasis.  See the green filler I used in the arrangement?  I actually cut it off a bush in my yard.  I LOVE using yard plants as filler!  I can pretty much always find a texture and color that compliments any floral design, and you just can't beat the price!

The "A" made a great photo prop.

it also looked grand as a centerpiece on the dessert table.  I didn't seal my letter perfectly, so I had a little bit of leakage at the bottom, and was very glad that I'd used a table runner made out of water-resistant outdoor fabric, so you couldn't tell at all during the party. 

I had thought about making my A out of poster board and foam core, like I'd made the marquee letters in this tutorial.  My plan was to spray it with Never Wet (which would have been a lot of fun to try!).  But I already had the foam insulation board in the garage, and I couldn't resist saving money.  I suspect you could purchase those large cardboard letters from the craft store, cut off the top, spray with Never Wet, and skip the whole make-the-letter-form step.  If you try it, let me know how it works!