A 1st for me....

I've never been a crafty person and I'm certainly not artistic, so what I'm about to share is waaaay out of my comfort zone. If you've spent anytime looking at any home decorating blogs, you'll see that decorative signs are everywhere. And lots of very talented people make them and they look so cute in their homes. So it got me to thinking, I wonder if I could make one? When we moved into our home, the previous owners left a bunch of wood in the shed. I sorted through and found one that would be a good size. Then I began thinking about what I wanted to put on the sign. I wanted something Spring or Easter related. I decided to use "He makes all things new." because it describes what happens at Spring and what Jesus did for us at Easter.

The first thing I did was paint the board with white paint. The paint was some that we had already. It's a basic white paint that you would use on the trim in your house. I did a couple of coats.(no picture)
I knew I wanted the letters to be green, so I used an acrylic paint, "green grass."


Next is when I had to get creative. I don't have one of those neat vinyl cutting machines to cut out the words but I knew I needed something to stick to the wood so I could paint over it but be simple to remove. I definitely didn't want the 'stenciled' look. So I created the phrase in a font that I liked on my computer and then printed it out on contact paper. I then had to cut out every.single.letter.by.hand. Oh my, it was a little trying.
Then I placed the words on the board.


You can see that some of the letters are black and some are white. That's because the ink never completely dries on the contact paper. I looked like I'd been finger printed by the time I finished getting the letters on. I ended up taking a wet paper towel and wiping the ink off the letters once they were in place. I didn't want it to mix with the paint.
Next, I painted it again with the white paint. I was gentle around the letters because I didn't want them to come off. (no picture) It took a couple of coats.
When it was dry, I couldn't wait to pull the letters off and see what it looked like.



As you can see, the paint bled underneath the contact paper. Which is ok with me. #1 I'm not a perfectionist and #2 I like that it gives it a little character. You can definitely tell it's homemade and I'm ok with that. And I also knew that I wasn't done.

The next thing I did was to "age" it a little bit. I took some wood stain, again, I used what we had in the shed. I'm glad I practiced on the back first! I used a rag to wipe the stain on and then used a WET paper towel to wipe it off. If the paper towel's not wet, it leaves too much stain. Trust me, I know! Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of this step.
The last step was to sand it. I used 80 grit sand paper and was surprised at the amount of sanding it took to get the look that I wanted.


The finished product~

When I get my mantel all decorated for Spring, I'll show you.

Then He who sat on the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new." And He said to me, "Write, for these words are true and faithful." Revelation 21:5

Love y'all dearly!



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