DIY Cardboard Letter Board

Hello there! I'm going to show you how to make a letter board out of cardboard. I made it for my aesthetic room decoration video.

You can start learning how to make the letter board at the beginning of this video or you can continue reading. You'll also get two other ideas from watching the video. Also, I will be making blog posts for the other two DIYs. They will be up in the next couple of weeks.

You will need:

Cardboard

Pencil

Ruler

Acrylic paint

Paintbrush

Scissors and x-acto knife

Hot Glue

White cardstock paper

Optional: washi tape or another type of tape and Mod Podge

1. Cut down a piece of cardboard to 12 x 12 inches. This will be the for the back of the letterboard.

You want thicker cardboard for the back because when you're done painting the cardboard it may warp it but if you use thinner cardboard I'll show you how to fix later.

2. Cut out five 10 x 1 inches of cardboard and you can trace the first one you cut out to create the other four or you can just measure them individually instead. This is where the letters will lay and you're going to want thinner cardboard for all five of these because of it being easier to cut.

If all you only have thick cardboard it will still work and you can make the width of these smaller than one inches.

3. Paint the back piece and the other five pieces with any color of acrylic paint.

You can pour paint on it so you save paint and you may need to do more than one coat. I painted the back piece white and the other five pieces black.

4. While you wait for the cardboard to dry, you can print and cut out letters and numbers out of white cardstock paper. You want to print out two or more of each letter and number.

5. You can also draw some shapes and you can create ones by measuring the height of the letters and mark it on a piece of cardstock paper.

Then you want to draw out your image and cut it out. I drew a pink heart.

6. Before you start glueing your pieces together, you want to layout some of your letters and the five pieces of cardboard so you get an idea of where you want them to lay on the back piece and measure it.

You want to measure it by marking a line on each side of the cardboard and then you want to draw a line to connect the dots. You want five lines and make sure you try to get it evenly spaced apart and make them straight. Mine were measured at about 2 inches apart.

Also make sure you measure how far you want them to be from the sides. 

7. When you're done making the lines, you want to take one of the five piece of cardboard and you want to take hot glue and put it on the long edge of the cardboard.

Make sure you don't add to much glue because you may see it when you're done and make sure you don't leave gaps or the letters will fall through the gaps.

8. When you're done putting glue on the cardboard, you can place the cardboard along one of the lines you put on the back and you want to lay on there standing up. You may need to hold it for a few seconds so it stays standing up.

9. After you're done gluing the first the piece of cardboard, you want to do the same things to the other four pieces of cardboard.

If you did use thinner cardboard for the back like me and if it warped because of the paint you can lay something on top of it so it will stay laying down.

10. When the glue is dry, I painted the sides of the cardboard, over pencil lines, where paint was removed from moving the cardboard and I also painted over the glue because the glue will become not as shiny and it blends into the backing or the other piece of cardboard. If you are having these problems you can do these things too.

11. Wait for the paint and the glue to dry before going onto the next step.

12. When the whole thing is dry and if you used a thin piece of cardboard like me you can find a thicker piece of cardboard and glue it to the back of the cardboard with hot glue. This will help it not look as warped and it should make it more flat.

To glue it down you want to add glue to the piece that you cut on the top and then you can lay it on the glue. Then you can add more glue underneath of the white cardboard and glue the rest of it down to the back piece.

13. I did cover up the logo on the back by covering it up with a couple of pieces of white cardstock paper and Mod Podge to make it look better and if you want you can do this to. 

14. Another optional step, you can do is that if you would like you can cover up the edges on the back. You can do this by taking washi tape or another type of tape and cover the edges with it and if it's not sticking you can glue it down with Mod Podge or another type of glue. 

I used black washi tape and I lined up the edge of the tape to the front and wrapped the rest on the back because of the tape being too wide. I also used Mod Podge to glue the tape down in some places because it wasn't sticking.

15. When you're done attaching all the tape of all of the edges or if you're done creating your letter board you're all done and you can start putting words or numbers on it.

I just put the word "hello" and the pink heart I created on it. I think it turned out looking really cute.

I also put the letters in a lid that came from a cardboard Christmas box but you can use whatever you like.

What's your thoughts on this cardboard letter board and will you be making one?