Painted Letters (and an engagement cake!)

Kyle and Mickey got engaged last weekend! She didn't know it was happening but everyone else did so we threw a surprise engagement party for them - as far as I could tell no one slipped up and tipped her off (I can't tell you how hard that was for me - we had 3 birthday parties, an all-day memorial event, and the engagement party all in a few days. Every time I tried to talk about the events I had to pause and think if what I was about to say was to the right person LOL, it was confusing. My mouth works faster than my brain so I was worried I'd say something wrong!).

I made a simple layer cake for the dessert table, mostly so I had something to stand this cute cake topper in! It says 'future mr & mrs' in gold glitter, so I decorated the cake with white buttercream frosting and heaped on a sprinkle mix I found online that is crazy chock full of different shapes in gold/silver/teal/white.

Question - the sprinkle mix is full of those hard little ball decorations like the silver dragees at Christmas and are super hard. They are meant to be consumed, right? I never know what to do with them because they are potentially tooth-breaking! 

For the dessert table (and as a engagement gift) we had a photo blown up on 16x20" canvas (shutterfly) and I found these tall wood letters that I painted and glittered. Looked great all together on the table!

This was so simple and easy to do - hardest part was deciding when to stop adding glitter :) I painted the letters using 'peacock teal' craft paint applied with a foam brush. It dried super fast so I was able to apply 3 coats in a matter of minutes. I only did the top of the letter leaving the sides and back natural. 

still a work in progress - I rubbed some of the thick gold glitter off before
adding silver glitter, and I also applied a little glitter along the opposite edge
(that was a Macey suggestion and it worked!) 

After the paint was dry I lightly brushed on elmers glue where I wanted the glitter to go, went light at first and kept applying until it looked right. Initially I only did gold chunky glitter but after sending a picture to Macey for her opinion I added some silver chunky glitter in with the gold, and I also made the glitter cover more of the letter. The store didn't have an & sign and I didn't know how I was going to come up with one, but then I found a tiny cross/plus sign in the bottom of the letter bin and thought it looked great with the big letters. Decided I liked it in it's natural brown stain so left it alone. 

The party was a blast - they were so happy and we loved celebrating this exciting time with them!