Okay. Here it is... The latest project. :)
I really enjoyed working on this one and I had been looking forward to it for quite a while.
Layton helped out a little. ;) He tore the pallet apart, cut the wood for me, and made sure I didn't mess it up while putting it together. :)
And I took it from there... The sanding, painting, and hanging. So are you ready to see it?
I worked on it for an evening and a day... It really didn't take very long at all and I absolutely love how it turned out. So in case you want to do this sign or something like this, here is what I did step by step.
First Layton brought home a pallet from work... He broke down the pallet so that I had 5 boards. I knew what size I wanted and just got enough boards to make the size. If you didn't have a pallet I would buy fence slats. He cut the length down to what I wanted. My sign was 16x20.
Then I sanded each board down a little, just so that you wouldn't get any splinters by working with the wood. I wanted my wood very rustic, do I didn't sand much. I left all the nail holes and dents in the wood because I like what they add. :)
Then come painting... I painted each slat with 1 coat of paint/primer. Make sure you get in all the crevices. I thought about sanding mine a little after this to make it even more rustic, but decided against it. Then we bought baskets and 3/8 in. screws and put the boards together. At that point you should have this....
Make sure you decide what side of the slat you want in front! These brackets were my favorite, but you could use hinges too.
After that things get time consuming. ;) You either need a cricut or some stencils for this next part. I used my cricut to cut out my letters in the size I needed. I also used two different fonts, but you wouldn't have to. After that you place them in the board and see if you need to make any changes. At this point you should have this...
At this point I made sure I liked the spacing between the lines and all of that. Then I took a pen (you could use a pencil) and outlined the letters. This takes a while since the wood is so ruff. After that you start filling in all your letters with a very small paint brush. I bought the sample size paints at home depot. Sometimes you can find these on sale for 50 cents, but they might not be the color you like. I put the coats of orange on and one coat of charcoal grey. The nice thing about doing a rustic sign is you can't rally mess this part up... If you're painting isn't perfect it just adds more character. ;)
And here it is, all hanging and beautiful. :) I used the teeth hangers, but you could do wire too. I love how it looks next to our wedding pictures.
So there you have it. A homemade sign that you couldn't buy that cheap! Change it up, make it your own, that's the fun in it. :)
~ God bless and happy crafting!
