I saw this at a Jonathan Adler shop and of course “I can make that myself”, so here I am.

I have seed beads and a canvas ready to go, but am stumped on how to raise the letters, which are slightly squishy, or at least they have give to them when pressed. I tried 1” foam letters that I cut out but the edges are too sharp. As you can see in the pic the letters are pillowed (?), not block-shaped. Thought about batting, but how do I shape it into letters? Thought about stacking letter-shaped sheets of foam but each layer would have to be smaller than the previous to give it that sloped look but that still doesn’t seem like the answer. Any ideas?