This is The Life {$1 Wooden Sign}

About a month ago I was over at Nester's blog and I saw her post she did about the sign she had on her mantel. I loved it! I wanted it! I must have it!

Nester found out that the sign is made by an Etsy shop called Go Jump in the Lake. I was excited and went right over but to my shock the sign is $125! I don't have an extra $125 to spend on this sign. Plus, there is no way I could convince Matt that this was a logical expense. Sad!

Fast forward a few weeks and Matt started working on Levi's bed. He bought a huge piece of mdf wood for the trundle bed and there were some pieces left over. My excitement returned as my wheels started turning. The pieces that were left over would make the perfect sized sign.

So here's how I made my sign.

Click on each picture to see closer

First, I had to glue the two pieces of mdf together to get the size I wanted. I wanted a 30 x 30 sign.


In the above picture the two pieces of wood are already glued together and I covered the line with wood putty and some other junk my husband had in the garage.

Step one and two complete!


I then painted two coats of white semi-gloss paint on the board and let that dry for a few hours. I skipped the primer because we didn't have any and I knew I was going to be painting over the white with black. I wanted the words to all line up so I measured a two inch border around the whole piece. That is what the arrows are pointing to.

Step 3 and 4 done!


I then went to the computer and played around with the sizing of the letters I wanted. Once I got the size I wanted I printed them out on cardstock and cut the out. I then traced the letters on to contact paper and cut them out. The contact paper letters are the ones I used.

*Note* If you do have some sort of vinyl cutting machine then you can make this so much easier. But I don't have one so I have to do this the long way.

Step 5 done!

I put the letters on the board exactly where I wanted them using my border as a guide.


I then painted two coats of white semi-gloss paint over the letters. Why? Because I wanted the letters to be stuck to the board so that when I painted the board black there wasn't any paint that seeped through. The white paint "glued" the letters down for me.


Once the white paint was dry I painted two coats of black over the letters. This is one paint project that I didn't care if the paint was perfect since I wanted some of the white to show through the black.



Steps 6 7 8 done!

After the black paint dried for a long time I used a knife to pry up the contact paper letters. Now the white lettering shows through. Perfect!


But it was a little too perfect for what I wanted. So I took some sandpaper to the sign. Let me tell you, I've never intentionally destroyed a project so I was very nervous about this part.

But overall I'm pleased with how it turned out. I may take some more sandpaper to it to bring out the white under the black. I want it to have a worn look to it. You can't tell in the pictures probably but the letters are more "roughed up" than what they look.




Steps 9 and 10 done!

I think this will be part of my summer mantel in a few months. And this only cost me $1 for the contact paper from Dollar Tree. I love it!!

*Please visit Go Jump in the Lake. They have great signs available for purchase. I just couldn't afford the one I wanted.*

Linking up to:
Christina's Adventures
The Shabby Creek Cottage
Cheap Crafty Mama
Someday Crafts
Savy Southern Style
Domestically Speaking