On my trip to Denmark in March, I spotted some adorable tote bags, coin purses, and handkerchiefs at one of their “dollar stores”. Listen, their “dollar stores” rarely have anything that’s actually a dollar, but you don’t even notice the exact price because everything at these dollar stores is well-designed and soooo cute. I LOVE walking through their mazes (think a smaller version Ikea) and classical music playing. It’s dark and full of surprises at every turn. It’s so great. I thought it’d be fun to buy a bunch of them as souvenirs for my team and friends and add monograms to EVERYTHING! I’m on a huge monogram kick lately.
In an ideal world, if I didn’t have a baby to wrangle, I would have embroidered them on the plane, but it’s now June and I’m FINALLY done with them. I showed a little sneak peek on Stories of what I was up to and got a lot of questions about the monogram process so I thought I’d share it with you. Here’s how to monogram EVERYTHING! AND, our own custom monogram font. Ye haw! 
How to Monogram everything
We did two types of monograms techniques: embroidery and stenciling. Embroidery for the hankies and totes and stenciling for the coin purses.
How to embroider (backstitch) a monogram
These instructions are for how to do a backstitch monogram.
Materials:
- The Lars Monogram Templates in every letter
- Fabric Carbon Transfer Paper
- embroidery needle
- embroidery floss
- hoop (depending on the size of the monogram)
- scissors
Instructions:
- Identify the letter you would like to print. You can find our exclusive Lars monogram set here.
- Place transfer paper on fabric in the spot you would like your monogrammed letter to be and with a pencil gently trace the letter (we used a pen here so it’s darker).
- Thread your needle.
- Start by entering your needle on the end of your letter from the opposite side of the fabricMake your first stitch. The smaller the monogram, the smaller the stitch. Keep in mind where the crossing points of the letter are. For the “E” as soon as the letters meet, you’ll want to end your stitch at those points so keep in mind the length of each stitch so you can plan accordingly. For rounded edges, the smaller your stitches, the more precise the curve. You’ll want to keep the stitches the consistently throughout.
- Finish letter my knotting the thread gently on the wrong side of fabric to the threading itself a few times and cutting it close.
How to paint a drop shadow monogram
We are big Clare V fans and love the monograms they’re always posting on their handbag company instagram (like these) SO we figured out our own method. Here we go!
Instructions
- letter stencils
- acrylic or textile fabric paint (if you intend to wash it)
- flat paint brush and thin round brush
- We created our own stencils by cutting our letters on our Cricut machine (we used the Bebas Neue font in all caps)
- Trace around the letter with a pencil
- Fill in the letter with a flat paintbrush
- Position the letter slightly down or up and diagonally to create the drop shadow. Trace around the existing letter.
- Use a thin round brush to fill in the drop shadow.
We’d love to see what your monogramming. Tag us with your photos using the tag #LarsMakes so we can take a lookie!