DIY Home Decor: Wooden Signs

If you happened to marry a man like I did, who is loathe to spend money on anything.  You have to think of creative ways to decorate your house.  Instead of spending over a hundred dollars in store, I spent around $20 putting this together with the help of my Cameo Silhouette (oh and my husband).

I started off going to a local hardware store, where I bought some 1x6's.  I also picked up some Rust-oleam Kona stain since I read other blogs raving about it.  Mike said we already had some polyurethane, so I didn't have to buy any of that.  I completed this project over about a week.  I wanted to make sure the stain and paints were dry, and I have two young toddlers.....so yeah.

Step one, choose your wood.  (insert snarky comment here).

Step 2: Stain.  I used one of Mike's old shirts, and I also wore plastic gloves since I knew this would get messy. 

Step 3: Polyurethane.  I used a small foam roller once the stain was completely dry the next day.

Step 4:  Attach your boards together.  We ended up using small wooden shims and lots of screws thanks to my husband's drill.  I've also read that using metal braces will help lighten the load of the sign.  Ta Da.

Step 5:  Decide on what you want on your sign.  Thanks to some awesome J14 mamas, I narrowed down my choices to decide on "together is our favorite place to be".  I used my Cameo Silhouette to make the stencils.  So you can learn from my mistakes, if you are going to use contact paper, spray some extra adhesive to it.  Otherwise it will not stick.  You can see the that "together" isn't as neat as the other words.  After that fail and before finding the spray adhesive trick, I switched to using some 631 I had laying around. 

**Another learn from my mistake moment.  Use make up sponges and dab the paint on.  Don't try and brush it on.  I pulled the vinyl off while the pain was still wet.  The smaller pieces inside the letters I waited till it was dry so I didn't smudge anything.

My final product:

I felt like it was too plain with just the words like I had planned, so I added a flourish design in the bottom left.  Besides the cost savings, I really enjoyed making this.