Amazing Grace Cross

This project was done primarily by my wife, it was her idea, and she painted it and stained the wood.  I attached the letters that is it.
Now that that is out of the way, all of the pieces can be purchased for this project at hobby stores, the cross was made out of yellow pine 1X4, that had been mortised together, cutout, sanded and rounded on the edges.  All of the letters were out of pressboard, and bought from hobby lobby.  The first thing was painting all the edges of the letters, black in this case.  This took a considerable amount of time to get done without any gaps.  And the acrylic paint was soaking into the wood so it took several cotes.  After dry, the face of the letters was painted red.  Primary red was used and it was very bright against the black outlines.  To soften the red up she first painted it with clear crackle paint.  This gave the letters some texture, next we had some “boot leather brown” glaze left over from glazing the walls in the house.  I suggested she glaze the letters to make the crackle show up.  After drying the glaze did the trick, it darkened and soften the red, made the crackle show up, and allowed her to stain the cross prior to attaching the letters.
Once all the letters and the cross were finished I had to come up with a way of attaching the letters to the cross.  I first reached for the brad nailer; this will be easy and does not require an investment in time or energy.  But the nail holes would have shown, and there is no way to patch crackle.  So option two was to mail them from the back, but if I miss and spilt the letters ill never hear the end of it.  So finally the only way to attach the letters was to glue and clamp them.  I used a simple wood glue to attach each letter, and cross clamped boards on top for some compression.  After about a day it is ready to hang on the wall.