DIY Wooden Sign

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I feel like I say this about everything, but I LOVE the way this sign turned out.

I made the other side of this sign at Board & Brush in San Antonio as a team builder for work (my idea)! It was a lot of fun, and I learned so much about how to make signs like these.

Problem was, it was Fall-themed, so in Texas I could only have it out for 2 weeks. I figured I’d flip it over and make a Winter version on the other side! I am aware that this means I need a Summer and Spring sign, and I’m pretty excited about that.

Here she is - I even made a video!

 
 
 
 

Supplies:

  • A large piece of wood. Mine is around 4’ x 1’

  • Stencils. I cut mine on a Cricut Maker using stencil vinyl in multiple sections.

  • Acrylic paint (so it holds up outdoors)

  • Glossy Mod Podge

  • Glitter - a lot

  • Rhinestones

Method

  • Making the stencils - I designed these in Cricut Design Space and used Cricut stencil vinyl on the Cricut Maker (Cricut. I just had to say Cricut one more time in the same sentence). I had to cut multiple sections to get the size I needed, and after weeding, I used transfer tape to prepare them for the board.

    • I only cut H M E once (each letter separately), and reused them

    • Obviously the snowflake and snow globe were separate

    • SWEET with the banner was separate

  • Placing the stencils - I am a perfectionist. This took forever.

    • Measured to find the center and marked it with a chalk line down the entire project.

    • Placed SWEET first to set the middle.

    • Placed H <snowflake> M E

    • Re-placed them again and again until they were perfect - step probably not necessary.

  • Painting the stencils

    • Even if glittering something, it’s always best to paint underneath it so the glitter has a good background to shine on. Generally your paint color should match your glitter.

    • Anytime stencils are involved, the paint method is to dab the paint with a foam brush on the entire project, being careful not to use too much paint. It might feel tedious, but it’s crucial if you want nice clean lines for the final result. If you swipe, the paint will go under the stencil and make ugly lines.

    • When possible, I carefully removed my stencils immediately after painting so that the stencil didn’t pull up any of the paint after drying. Since I was re-using these stencils, I placed them carefully off to the side. The only stencils I didn’t pull up right after painting were the snowflake and snow globe because they required additional steps (most importantly, glitter).

    • Once the paint was dry on the letter stencils, I moved to the bottom and placed H <snow globe> M E and repeated the dab-dab-dab and stencil removal steps as above. Except for the being-careful-with-the-stencils-after-removal part. They went in the trash.

  • Glitter

    • Now that the paint was dry on the snowflake, I dab-dab-ed some glossy Mod Podge on the stencil and dumped white glitter on it. At some point above I had painted the white snow pile at the bottom, so I put Mod Podge and white glitter on that too. By this point the snow globe was dry so I put Mod Podge on that, then white glitter on the outline, green glitter on the tree, and gold glitter on the star and tree stand. I dumped off the excess glitter. I still didn’t take off the stencil.

    • Another coat of Mod Podge, to keep all the glitter in place and not all over my house. I removed the stencil right after this last coat of Mod Podge while it was still wet (basically, as soon as I possibly could).

    • For the snow at the bottom, I dab-dab-ed on some pretty chunky white/iridescent glitter with the Mod Podge.

    • Now that all the stencils were removed, I used some nail polish remover to fix paint blemishes, then let it dry overnight.

  • Rhinestones

    • Using Mod Podge as glue, I placed some rhinestones, because everything needs more glitter

Done!