the delicate art of sign-making

So you may recall that I did a little crafting for my mothers’ Mother’s Day gifts this year. A few months back I crafted a little sign for my own house—just a little truth I needed to be reminded of frequently:

Both my mom and Mama Pat have commented multiple times that they liked my sign, so when MD rolled around and I had no good gift ideas, I thought why not make them their OWN signs?? I know, I’m basically a genius.

And then I thought—why not take pictures of every single step so that you can show the whole world what an easy craft this is?! So I did. And Mattie helped some. But believe me—this is NOT a tricky craft. And BONUS—doesn’t even require very special materials! If you own some paints (acrylic) and brushes and can find a scrap of wood somewhere, you have everything you need to get crafting! So here we go.

First get your husband to cut a rectangular piece of wood. This will serve two purposes: getting you the piece of wood you need, and letting your husband contribute something to the project. Don’t be too picky about your rectangle—in my opinion, a little irregularity looks refreshing. I don’t know what kind of wood it is that we used, exactly, but it’s that thin, cheap kind. We already had it out in the garage left over from some other project. Just use whatever you can find.

Then mix your paints. You can see the magazine page that my plate is sitting on—that was my color scheme inspiration.

Then slap that paint onto your board. Told you this wasn’t rocket science.

Then mix up your next paint (for the words). The words are definitely the most tedious part. Sometimes I sketch them onto the board first, in pencil, to make sure I have the size and spacing just right. Sometimes I don’t. The thing is, I’m no good at tracing over the pencil with paint, and then you can just see the pencil marks chilling on the finished product, since you can’t very well erase them off the painted board. So…do whatever makes you happy. Honestly, the next time I do this I will probably spring for a paint pen. I think that would make things way easier.

After you finish painting your words, you could definitely be done. OR you could just keep going and jazz it up a little. I chose to do my jazzing with some beads my mom gave me awhile back. The beads worked quite nicely with my color scheme, so I decided to put a cross on it (with hot glue, which you can definitely see in this zoomed-in picture, but isn’t nearly so obvious in real life!).

Then I glued a wire onto the back, in case they wanted to hang it on the wall. I also bought some little plaque-stands at Hobby Lobby, in case they wanted to have it sitting on a shelf or something somewhere. (And by ‘they,’ I mean each of our moms. I made them each one. They don’t live together…or have joint custody of one little sign…although that would be pretty funny!)

And ta-da!! A finished little sign thingy. This picture isn’t exactly well-focused, but you get the gist of it. A cutesy little homemade thing that they both seemed pretty happy about. What more can you ask for for MD, right? It’s all about your kids making you crafts…even when the kids are almost 30!

And let me reiterate—the price was right. All it took was half a Saturday!

So there you have it: one of the easiest crafts ever. Take that, Pinterest.

PS. Speaking of Pinterest…I hope you are all avid fans of Pinterest, You are Drunk. For real. That is the funniest thing ever. Check it out!!