more fun with wood

Happy April!  A couple of weeks have passed since my last post.  But, I'm still on the same fettish...wooden signs.  Sarah's BELOVED sign came together so quickly and was so much fun that it felt like I struck gold or something.  So, I've been experimenting on more wooden signs.  Three to be exact.  Two were gifts and one was for me.  So, let's get started, shall we?

This first one is skinny.  It was a confirmation present for Kaitlin.   She asked me to be her sponsor, so I wanted to make her something personal.  We spent a week together at a Young Life camp last July and our theme for the week was 'be free'.  So I decided to make her a sign with these words:  BE REAL, BE FREE, BE BOLD.  Again, cut on my cricut and mod podged onto the painted wood.  I added a scripture verse to the other side too...I somehow forgot to take a picture of that. 

Here it is on my entrance table.  It looks nice there, and made me realize I need to make me one just for this space.   That project will be for another day. 

The second wooden sign is for my niece, Claire, for her 20th birthday.  She saw Sarah's sign and requested one for herself.  She provided me with two of her favorite scripture verses and let me choose which one to use.  Here is Claire's sign.

I found a little piece of 1/4 plywood that had two good sides.  I liked both of her verses so I used both of them, one on each side.  (I forgot to take a picture of the back, again.  Should I be worried that a pattern is developing here?)  This side says, "...and his banner over me is love" from Song of Songs.  I cut out the letters on my cricut (no kidding) and used the stencil this time.  Purple is Claire's favorite color, so that was an easy choice.   There was some space on the bottom to add flowers. 

I tried something different as an effect.  I watered down a little bit of the purple color and painted the whole sign again.  The water took off some of the stenciling and washed it out.  I had to restencil some of the letters, but left most of them washed out.  It has a really different look to it.  More artsy than I really am.   I gotta say, it's fun to take risks sometimes.  Happy Birthday, Claire!

And here's the third sign, for me and my house. 

I changed the mantel to our fireplace in our downstairs family room.  Moved a framed lighthouse picture to a different wall and relocated a wooden sailboat to the mantel.  I needed something behind the sailboat to accentuate it, so why not make something?  Yes, sirree, I'm right on it. 

Now, I know this looks like a piece of wood, but it's actually thick cardboard.  Perfect size and pretty sturdy too.  I painted it to look like the ocean.  Then I experimented...a wrote out a poem really big in cursive letters (the poem is about sailing that Sarah wrote when she was young.)   I liked the idea, but the execution left me uninspired. 

I stenciled on some other words in a different size.  I liked this too, but not right yet. 

So, I repainted the whole front to cover up all these words and while I was waiting for the paint to dry, I remembered I saw something I liked on Pinterest - a wooden board with just the word BEACH painted on it. It was simple and it had impact. So that's what I ended up doing. I cut out 6" letters: SAILING and stenciled them on. I liked the results.

The final test was what it looked like with the sailboat.  I hung it above the mantel...and loved the final look!  What do you think?