A Fun One-of-a-kind Summer Sign

It does not surprise me that my last post was at the beginning of May!  What a whirlwind our life was that month.  But we survived--our oldest graduated from High School & our youngest graduated from Kindergarten--and we are settling into summer.

Very, very, slowly over the last couple months, I have been working on a new sign to hang up above my mantel.  I am trying to be much more patient with myself on these things than I was before. (or maybe I am just getting lazy in my old age!)  But I had seen some inspiration and decided to put a couple ideas together and really create something myself...not just "re-create" something that I had seen.  

And you know what?  It was a LOT of fun.

And I have decided that I really love one-of-a-kind decor.  I love looking around my house and seeing things that I worked hard to do.  (Or that one of my children worked hard to create.  My second oldest recently gave me a beautiful peacock watercolor for Mother's Day.  I will share when I finally get it framed!)

So here's how my little creation ended up:

I had seen this sign on pinterest a couple months ago.  I loved the saying and the little arrow idea, but I was not wild about the picket fence look.  Plus, I needed it to pop out against the white background of my paneling.

(source)

Then, I visited the new Costa Vida in our town and I saw these beautiful walls that were in their restaurant and I got the idea to mix the two.

So that is when I drew this little sketch...making little notes about which boards should be stained dark and which would be painted my colors.  I wanted some oceany blues and a couple rich oranges to tie it into my living room decor.

Then I went to Home Depot, bought some boards, and just started cutting.  And re-measuring...and cutting some more....ok, and some more...until I ended up with this:

Then I started mixing up some cheap acrylic paint I had bought at Walmart into some blues, oranges, and yellows.  When I got done, they seemed a little bright...

So I just grabbed the wood stain and rubbed it all over those colored boards and LOVED the result!

It perfectly mellowed and aged the colors for me.

After they were all dry, I simply used my Wood Glue to make one solid piece and painted on the little arrow head.  And then, to be totally real and honest with you...it sat like this for many, many, days!  I loved how things had gone to this point, so I was a little scared of ruining it with the lettering!

I spent quite some time on DaFont.com. Have you ever tried it?  It is amazing!  The coolest thing is that you can preview your specific text in any of their fonts!  Love it.  I searched and narrowed it down and my husband helped me choose the two fonts I used. 

 I ended up using Southern Aire (script font) and Fortunata (print font).

I printed the words out in the desired size and cut each one out.  Then I rubbed graphite on the back of each one, making sure I was covering the backside of each letter.  I then used a ball point pen to trace each word onto my wood.  The graphite powder leaves a line, like a pencil, and the pen kind of etched the letters into the wood.  Both were necessary for me to see the lettering on some of the really dark parts.  I then (painstakingly) painted the words.  On the script lettering (at my husband's suggestion), I used a lighter yellow to create highlights and help the letters pop out a bit more.  And on the two orange  words, I ended up outlining them with a brownish sharpie marker to make them completely readable.

But in the end...I was very happy with how it turned out.

I bought a cheap little straw wreath at JoAnn's and wrapped it in yellow fabric for my "sun" and then made a little orange flower out of fabric.  And that was that!  I finally got it up about the time Fourth of July decor should be up, but oh well!  We are just going to skip the Red, White, and Blue this year.  ; )