Tag: sign

Craft Projects, Pallet Projects

“Love” pallet signs

Jessica Smith

My girlfriends and I had a craft night last weekend and made small pallet signs.

Love sign_Jess

Here’s the gist of how I made the signs (I had to make 3 in half an hour, so no pictures):

  1. Cut the wood off of the pallet using a reciprocating saw
  2. Line up the wood you want to use as the front of the sign face down, then place two pieces of wood perpendicular as the back supports
  3. Screw or nail in the supports
  4. Using a circular saw, trim the edges of the signs so they are straight
  5. Sand down the sign
  6. Add picture hanging hardware to the back

I’ve made pallet signs before, so if you’d like more detailed steps on how I constructed the actual sign, check out this post.

{A Smith of All Trades} Pallet Bar Sign

The only difference was my nail gun wasn’t working, so I screwed in the back supports instead of nailing them in.

Carrie found an adorable “Love” sign on Pinterest that we decided to do our own take on. We painted the signs using mint and metallic gold paint. The gold paint didn’t show up well on the pallet, so we covered the whole sign in stain to help the paint pop.

Here’s what we came up with:

Carrie’s Sign:

Love Sign_Carrie

Amy’s sign (she wrote “my heart” in Gaelic):

Love Sign_Amy

And my sign:

Love Sign_Jess1

They are so stinkin’ cute! I’m not sure where I’ll put mine yet — I was thinking in our bedroom, but it isn’t that big so I don’t know if it will look right on any of our walls. I’m also toying with adding it to a gallery wall I’ve been working on for months. I suck at putting gallery walls together and never seem to get them quite right. Plus, I always seem to hang the same photos over and over. So I want to rework the gallery with art in it, so this might fit in nicely.

Since I know I want to hang it up, I added picture wire to the back. I also added soft gel pads so it doesn’t muff up my walls.

Love sign_back

Another successful craft night! Do you ever craft with friends? What sorts of things do you make? We are always looking for fun ideas.

Craft Projects

Baby Brother sign

Jessica Smith

My good friend Carrie is expecting her second son in September and I am so excited for her and family. This baby has been dubbed “baby brother” throughout her pregnancy (her last baby was nicknamed “Kermie”) and she jokes that it should be his actual name.

Using scrap wood from my console table project, I made her a sign for her little one’s nursery using the nickname.

Spare Wood

I pulled out a piece of wood that actually broke off where it was laminated/glued together to the other boards. (Hopefully that doesn’t happen to the larger sheets of wood I used for the tables). I sketched out “baby brother” and then immediately sanded it off because I didn’t like it.

I opted to freehand paint it instead.

Baby

I did “baby” in off-white and cursive.

Painted sign

Then, I painted “brother” in navy and a print handwriting.

I added a few dots of the opposite color to each word as a cute little accent.

Drilled hole

Then, I drilled holes in the top two corners large enough to string rope through.

Before adding the rope, I stained the board with a light weathered gray stain.

Stained word

This really helped the off-white paint pop.

Stained sign

I put the rope through each hole and knotted it so it wouldn’t pull back through, then hung the sign up to dry. Since it will just be hanging on a wall, I didn’t bother with poly.

Hanging to dry

I gave her the sign on Thursday and she loved it!

Baby Brother sign Carrie

I can’t wait to see where she puts it in her nursery and I can’t wait to meet her little boy 🙂

Christmas, Craft Projects, Gift Idea, Holiday, Pallet Projects

Mini Anchor Sign

Jessica Smith

One of my really good friends love to sail and is soon to be sailing a boat in the Caribbean with her hubby — what a neat vacation idea!

I wanted to make her something for Christmas so I grabbed a leftover piece of pallet wood and brought it inside to make a sign with an anchor on it.

Pallet wood is really…. splintery. So I sanded and sanded and sanded. And when I thought I was finished, I wasn’t, so I sanded some more.

IMG_2074

When the wood was smooth enough to work with, I sketched an anchor onto it. It wasn’t pretty, but it was good enough.

IMG_2075

Nice anchor, huh? I didn’t care about the terrible sketch because I filled the entire thing with gray and black paint. Then, I wrote her last name on the sign.

IMG_2076

With the sign painted, I needed to drill holes big enough to pass a small rope through, so I busted out the drill and created two holes at the top.

Then, I used a water-based stain to color the wood. I’ve never used water-based stain before, but I like it a lot. The wood soaks it up right away and there is a huge variety of colors to choose from. The color I picked for the sign was Minwax’s Driftwood stain.

I only used one coat for the small sign, then I let it dry overnight.

Then next day I touched up some of the paint, mainly the black lines, and added rope and an anchor button so my friend could hang her sign.

Here’s the finished product:
IMG_2117

 

I gave her the sign yesterday and she really liked it. Yay!
IMG_2120