Est. 2007

I did a quick little craft this weekend, and thought I would share the results.  We had this sign that started out in our old house, made the venture to the new house, then made it to the bonus room for a yard sale.  Well after stalking reading some other blogs, I decided to redo it.  Here we go.....

This is the before...I wonder why I paid money for this sign.  It seems so ugly when I look at it now! Ha!

First I painted it white, two coats to cover up that ugliness!  While that was drying I searched thru Picnik for some font that I liked.  I decided to do an "established" sign for our front porch.  I traced the letters so that I could shade them directly onto the board.  (Don't worry I took pictures to explain the "shading")   I'm lucky enough to work in an x-ray department with light boxes for viewing the xrays, so I used one of those.  If you aren't as lucky as me you could use a window, or print the font dark enough to be able to see with out any extra light.
Here is a picture of the paper on the light box.  You have to trace the letters on the back side, so the letters will be backwards when you are tracing them.  This way you can simply flip the paper over and "shade" them onto the surface.  Be sure to trace over the letters a few times.  It will pay off in the end, trust me!

Here is a picture after I shaded it onto the wood...

Be sure to shade really hard, so that the traced lines on the back side transfer. 

This is what it will look like when you remove the paper.  It's kind of hard to see, but this is the best picture I could get. Sorry :(

After this I painted them with a coat of basic black paint, then sanded over the entire board.

Obviously it is way too white, so I wiped some stain across it.  This "aged" it dramatically, just what I wanted!

It turned out really well, or at least I think so!  Here it is in its new home on our front porch.

Well there's the craft for the day.  I made some more shirts for the kids.  I will try to post those this week sometime.