Crafty Eddy was the one who made it for me. He doesn't have a website, you have to email him. He was super nice and he did this for $14 including shipping. It's a "C" in Edwardian font. Mr. Glampants and I learned that not all scripted "C's" are created equal. Some look like an "E", some look like an "L", and some don't look like anything resembling a letter. Edwardian font is the one that looks fancy but still allows you to decipher the letter. Crafty Eddy cranked this beauty out in a day. I ordered it around 9 AM and he emailed me a photo of the finished carved and sanded product about 7 hours later. Shipping was also fast.
I was ready to start the project! We bought indoor/outdoor spray primer which Mr. Glampants helped me with priming:
To save money, I opted to use my acrylic paint from the runner. Primed and painted the letter, let it dry, all was good. I also found a new use for a beer bottle.
Fearful of my yet unused hotfix tool, I found some courage and set everything up. Holy cats, those crystals are tiny! Now I know what the tweezers are for. Picked up a crystal in the tool, set it down on the letter, and disaster struck. It was melting my paint! Come to find out, acrylic paint is not heat resistant. I should have checked before I tried it, totally my fault. Lesson learned.
The next weekend was Take 2. We bought spray on paint stripper, and BBQ grill paint. Because we knew that would be heat resistant. We didn't see regular indoor/outdoor Krylon paint. Stripped and painted the letter, let it dry overnight.
Set up the hotfix tool and the crystals again. This time it worked. But it took some practice with the tool to understand how it worked. It's super neat! Not really easy at first. I burned my fingers a bunch of times using them to slide the crystals over once they were attached. That is until I realized I could do that with the tool itself. Sometimes the crystal would get stuck in the tool and I'd have to use a needle to get it out. I now understand why people say it's "eye-popping back-breaking" work. It is. I didn't want to stop because I wanted it done. I got at least half of it done in about 2.5 hours.
A few more hours another night and VOILA!
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