Give me an E!

To add to the earlier Special K..

As you may know, the second letter of my last name is "E". I decorated this letter keeping in mind our frequent trips to Canada last year. 

Not only is the maple leaf the most widely recognized national symbol of Canada (thanks to the flag), everywhere you look in Canada you'll find products made from the maple tree and maple syrup. No surprise there since Canada produces 80% of the world's maple syrup. 

Besides being used as a substitute for honey in some recipes, the syrup is also used in making  granola, cakes, pies, breads ... you get my drift. You can find maple-flavored-just-about-anything in Canada!

Note to self: Say thanks to the Canadians the next time I'm piling pancakes on my plate! :)

So coming back to the letter at hand. How did I do it you ask? Here is how.

Materials used:

Paper mache letter

Cardstock paper in red, orange and green

Red and gold acrylic paint

Maple leaf paper punch

Glue (and a fair amount of patience that doesn't come with it!)

To get started, I painted the back and sides of the letter with gold and red respectively. This allows the artwork to have a finished look in the end.

Then I painted one section of each colored paper with gold and let it dry. 

With my handy little paper punch, I then went about making lots of maple leaves (punching both regular and painted sections of the sheets). This way, I had gold leaves with slight hues of the original color.

 Note: I made sure to punch more red and orange leaves to achieve an overall red colored finished product.

Then, with some all-purpose glue and patience, I began to stick them on the paper mache letter. I started at the edges so that these would be somewhat contained and yet peeking out of the boundary.

I made sure to overlap the leaves to get that wonderful look of fallen leaves on the ground.

And finally, the 'K' has a companion with others on the way :)