the craft house & a wood sign tutorial

December started off with one of my favorite weekends of the year!

15 of us rent Megan's Craft House for the weekend and just get away (even if I was 2 minutes from my house, it's still an awesome get away).  

Dave had been sick for Thanksgiving and got better JUST in time that I could leave him with the kiddos for the weekend.  It was a much needed break after our first month of being sick. 

It's such a fun house.  But more than anything it's an escape from mama and wife duties to just get some personal things done, enjoy time with friends, sleep in, stay in our pajamas all weekend and just relax and be creative.

 

I got more projects done this year than any other.  Mostly because I stayed off my computer and away from some of the time-sucking projects I've done in the past. 

My first goal was to get a piece of barn door that we took from the original family homestead, Dave's great grandparents' farm, turned into a keepsake.  I debated and debated doing something that would be up all year long, or just Christmasy, and I went with Christmas, because that's where all my inspiration was coming from at the time.

I've had so many people asking me how I did it, and I am NO expert, I was nervous and scared to mess it up.  I kind of went in without an exact plan so it was nice to have lots of girls talk through my plan with me. 

So here goes (sorry I had no plans of posting a tutorial until so many people have asked for instructions, so I probably don't have very good pictures to go along with the directions):

1.  I printed my words at home.  I just used Microsoft Word, but for another sign I just did I used Photoshop Elements because it allowed me to stretch my words to the size how I wanted them.  In Microsoft Word I just kept changing the font and looking at the measurements until I felt like it was the size I wanted.

I printed several test copies and laid them on the board until I knew they were the right size. 

I tried to mix fonts without over-mixing.  But I'm not a font expert that's for sure.  That was actually maybe one of the hardest parts of the entire project.

2.  There may be an easier way to do all of this but I knew that I didn't want to try free-handing any part of this, so I knew I needed to come up with a stencil of some sort. I ended up taping the papers from my computer to contact paper (making sure that the words would be the right direction when the contact paper was sticky side down). Make sure you double check this so that when you peel the contact paper apart and lay the sticky side down on your wood, the words will go the right way.

3.  I taped my words to the contact paper in order to keep them from slipping as I cut them out. 

I used an exacto knife to cut out all the words.  So i was cutting through both the paper from my computer and the contact paper at the same time.  It was time consuming and my hand cramped up by the end.  And swirly letters weren't so fun, but it was worth it.  I guess if there is a way to put your contact paper through the printer that would be the easiest.  Make sure to keep all your centers of letters, like the o's, e's, etc.

4.  One word at a time, I stuck the contact paper down on my wood and pressed it down as hard as I could.  It doesn't have the best stick, but it was enough to hold my word in place so I could paint the insides.

5.  On the edges, swipe the foam brush across the edge of the letter going in towards the letter and not away from it.  This just helps the contact paper seal down instead of my brush peeling it up.  If I was worried about bleeding under the contact paper or messing the contact paper up in spots, I just used a dabbing motion instead of brushing my foam brush across.

6.  I peeled up each word while the paint was still wet, in hopes to not peel up paint once it dried.  This worked fine. 

7.  I didn't have anything I wanted to touch up, but if you do, you could wait till it's dry and then use a tiny brush to touch up edges wherever needed.

I realized when I was done that my words all looked a little too far to the right.  I wanted them towards the right, but didn't really plan for all the blank space in that left bottom corner.  But it ended up working perfectly when the star I already had planned to use beside the sign.

 If you plan to use the sign outside like these other signs I did a few weeks later as gifts, then you need to cover them with a clear top coat/protector of some sort.

I got the sign done in a few hours and then moved on to my other projects.  

I've had throw pillows for our couch for a long time just sitting in our basement because I didn't really like them anymore.  So I made new covers for them using this tutorial.

Yay for new pillows!!

I covered cardboard JOY letters from Hobby Lobby with an old sweater (it was harder than I thought because I used a super sheer sweater that kind of shed and fell apart as I cut it up, and I burned my fingers like crazy with the hot glue).  But up on our shelf they look great!

I used my scraps from the pillow covers to cover HOME letters also, so when I take the JOY letters down and pack them up with Christmas decorations, I'll have something else to put up.

And at the last minute, because those pillow covers were so easy, I made Christmas covers for the pillows too.

Man, it feels so good to get some things done that have been on my list for so long.  And before you talk about how crafty I am, please please know that none of these ideas are unique really.  In the world of Pinterest and online tutorials, I am thankful to get to COPY.  They are things that pretty much anyone can do. While I'm not great at coming up with creative ideas of my own, I can totally use others and duplicate.  And I think that's a huge purpose of the social media community we have...to share ideas.  So copy away!  It definitely makes getting to sew and create things a little more enjoyable to me, and I can get so much more done without figuring it all out on my own...especially when I pretty much do this kind of stuff one weekend a year.

Craft Weekend 2014 is already booked!!