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Create Decorative Yarn Letters

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Learn how to make simple decorations for your wedding with this easy DIY tutorial for yarn-wrapped letters!

Create Decorative Yarn Letters
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This wedding DIY project is super affordable as well as cute. You may even have these supplies just lying around your house!

DIY project yarn letters

Supplies you’ll need:

How to Make DIY Yarn Letters

This was a super easy and fun project to create decorative yarn letters. You could use these letters in a variety of ways as decoration for your wedding, so they are super versatile. Some ideas include:

  • put the letters on your head table
  • use them to decorate your cake table
  • display them as your guests enter the ceremony space
  • hang them on the wall
  • string them down into a space
  • use them as part of your photobooth backdrop

… the possibilities are endless!

Step one:

Draw your letters on the cardboard. The more square you can make your letters, the better. Our first prototype was very curvy, and it turns out, very hard to wrap with yarn. We abandoned the curvy style for a more square letter design style.

DIY project yarn letters

Step two:

Cut out your letters. If you have heavy-duty scissors, they might work, or you can use an Xacto knife or box cutter. Just make sure you have something down on the surface where you’re cutting to protect it!

Step three:

Take one of the letters and staple a piece of yarn to it. Don’t get too hung up on where you start. You’ll end up going every-which-way no matter what.

DIY project yarn letters

Step four:

Start wrapping! We learned quickly that you can’t be too neurotic about this. While you should be wrapping the yarn tightly right beside itself each time for maximum coverage, you will have to double-back over places you’ve wrapped before to make it cover every part of the cardboard.

For example, on the “L” we wrapped the bottom of the letter vertically first, then doubled back over the bottom horizontally. Then, we made our way up the tall part of the letter horizontally, then wrapped the tall part of the letter vertically. It’s the only way you can get the yarn to cover all the edges and give you that fully-covered look. Unfortunately, we didn’t take a picture of the “L” wrapping, but the “O” will give you a sense of how all over the place you will be.

DIY project yarn letters

Step five:

When you’re done wrapping everything tightly, wrap it a few more times chaotically. Not only does this look rustic and cute, it also covers up any randomness/errors/differences in your coverage or wrapping.

Step six:

When you’re done, tie the end of your string to whatever other strings you can. Repeat with all your other letters until you’re done. TAH DAH! Adorable yarn letters that you can use to decorate your wedding!

A few tips for making DIY yarn letters:

  • If you’re spelling a four-letter word, use the cardboard from the bottom of 24 cans of pop. It makes it easy to divide and all your yarn letters will be to scale.
  • Make your letters as square as possible. Wrapping curves is tricky because the yarn doesn’t have anything to stay taut on. We could only wrap the curves of the “O” at the end because it had other yarn to grip.
  • If you’re spelling LOVE, wrap your “O” last, or when you have a small ball of yarn. You will have to pass the ball of yarn through the middle. The “O” took the same amount of time to wrap as the “L”, “V”, and “E” combined.
  • If you wrap too tight and/or your cardboard is weak, the cardboard may begin to buckle once you have a good amount on it. This sucks because it looks like you have to undo everything–you don’t. We found this can be rectified by slipping a wooden BBQ skewer (basically a giant toothpick) under the yarn you’ve already wrapped for reinforcement.

Wrapping the yarn letters took only one ball of yarn and the cardboard came from the recycling dumpster behind our apartment. We bought “mill-ends” yarn from Wal-Mart. We got 4 balls for $1.00, therefore making the word LOVE a total of $0.25! BAM!

Happy yarn wrapping!


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This article was written or prepared by a member of the editorial team for The Budget Savvy Bride. Our team is made up of a handful of incredible ladies -- learn more about them here!