Easy Wooden Sign

Wooden Sign DIY

This wooden sign style is all the rage and you can make one! Our goal with this particular sign, was just to give it a try; you know how we love to wing it. We literally made it from scraps. 

On to the tutorial:

The Mean Man took three pieces of scrap wood and trimmed them down to 3″ widths. He then cut them 15″ long. After cutting, he took his sander and smoothed out the wood slats and slightly curved them as well. This gives the illusion of there being space left between the boards. We really have them glued and butted together.

Wood Sign DIY

Attaching the pieces of wood together is the next step.  I didn’t want the sign to stick out very far from the wall so we went with the thinnest strips we could find that would still hold the sign together. 

Wood Sign DIY

The Mean Man attached the strips with a staple gun.

Wood Sign DIY

Next it’s time to stain. We actually tried something new with this project. Minwax makes something called “Wood Finishing Cloths” which are cloths that include the stain. You just take the cloth out of the package and then wipe it on your project.

Wood Sign DIY

Wood Sign DIY

I wanted more than just stained wood, so I decided to use a dry brush technique with some chalk paint.  Be sure your stained board are completely dry before you paint.

To dry brush, you just need to dip your brush in the paint and then wipe off most of it on a paper towel.

Wood Sign DIY

dry-brush-sign-9

You can see I just had poured a tiny bit of paint onto a plastic plate. It doesn’t take much. Just randomly add your paint to the boards.

Wood Sign DIY

Wood Sign DIY

I will confess, my intention was to stencil a nice warm and fuzzy saying over the paint. Turns out, I really suck at painting with a stencil; it was a mess. So, I took some more chalk paint and painted over the awful, mess I had made with the stencil. I still wanted a warm fuzzy saying, so I just did a vinyl cutout on my Silhouette. 

Almost done!

Wood Sign DIY

The Mean Man drilled holes in the top two corners so I could add some jute twine to make a hanger for the sign. He used some electrical tape on the ends of the jute so it could be threaded through the holes. I tied a knot in the jute to secure it (I cut away the taped part).

Wood Sign DIY

Adding a spray polyurethane finished the sign by protecting it.

Wood Sign DIY

Even with having to repaint the stencil mess, I think this experiment turned out really cute. I could have done a bit better with my vinyl placement, but this being just a first try, I’m really happy with the sign. I’m excited to try some other designs. I hope you feel like you can give this a try.

Wood Sign DIY

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