tips on diy signs

Buying a stencil from Etsy or vinyl lettering from someone with a Cricut would be super easy and inexpensive.

I used acrylic paint and transfer paper for my wood signs. Printed off the wording then traced it and painted. Voila!

Are you committed to the wood signs? I used acrylic for all my signage, and luckily it’s see through and easily traceable!! I found some free hand lettering fonts online, printed up the words for my signs, and traced away! I’m in love with how they turned out!

I used oil based paint markers (sharpie brand) on the glass on the windows I'm using. Those work amazing! As for wood I used chalk board paint because it is a little thicker and it worked and I am also using my moms cricut for a lot of things.

If you do get more practice and want to go the marker route (which is easier in my opinion), I would definitely suggest the oil based paint markers made by Sharpie, or POSCA markers. I really love the POSCA brand right now. They have a fine point marker that I'm using to address my envelopes, which is super smooth once you get the hang of it. I would also suggest just getting paper and writing what you want over and over again for practice. It really helps.

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That is kinda where I'm at now. My future MIL purchased a cricut explorer 2 specifically for us to make DIY wedding decor but we're both pretty clueless as to how to use it, and I have little to no patience to learn LOL. I'm about to just purchase the SVG files from ETSY and put them on myself.

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Not completely committed to wood for all of the signs. We have a bunch of like 10x10 glass panels sitting around at work from old fixtures and I've been practicing on those with chalkboard paint and acrylic paint. The acrylic paint was a FAIL because I don't have the steadiest hand, but I'm not too shabby with the chalkboard paint. How did you print them or make them? Like the words to trace?

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I just ordered acrylic paint markers. I think they are Artistro brand. I'm not 100% sure if they are oil based or not, but they looked promising. May try this route if mine fails!

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What do you paint the chalk board paint on? I've tried to paint in on glass panes that we had laying around at work, and it came out kind of lumpy. I was unsure what to use to paint it on, how many coats (how thick to make it), and what exactly I should use as my canvas to paint the chalkboard paint on.

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This is where I'm clueless! So you buy transfer paper and put the wording under the transfer paper and trace it on the transfer paper? Then what? How do you get it onto the sign?

View Quoted Comment YouTube will be your best friend to help learn the Cricut. I have found so much info on there. Svgs are cheap as well. I recommend doing the stencil and painting it.

View Quoted Comment Heres what I did:
-Print off sign wording
-Tape transfer paper to the wood sign, chalk side down
-Tape design over transfer paper
-Trace words on design paper with pencil
-Remove design and transfer paper, you'll see something like the photo then
-fill in design with paint.

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I used it on wooden crates and wooden numbers. I applies enough coats to cover the wood up, I believe it was two. Everything else I had was glass and I used the oil based paint markers.

View Quoted Comment I found the font that I used called “autumn in November” on the website womangettingmarried.com. There are lots of sites that you can download free fonts, though! You can even purchase a font on Etsy for a couple dollars. Then I typed up the welcome and other signage words on the computer and printed them out. Taped them behind the plexiglass, and traced away with a “chalk ink marker” it was so easy!

the picture shows the paper taped to the back of the glass, which i already traced.

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What kind of transfer paper would you recommend? Is it clear? Or do you by chance have a link to where you got it if you got it online. Those look really good!

View Quoted Comment Https://www.amazon.com/dp/b0027aenyk/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_30fwcbbsced9h

I bought it from Blick but this is the stuff. They have different colors for different purposes but I used the white one. You can reuse the sheets too. It just might be a little spotty if the designs overlap on the transfer.

View Quoted Comment This is what I want to do, where did you get board?

You're going to have the best luck with the smoothest surface. If you get wood make sure you sand it and stain it. If you get chalkboard paint make sure it's not super grainy. The paint pens work the best in my opinion but you only get one chance. If you want the chalk board look though, you have to ask yourself whether you will want to use it again. Chalk pens are great but they tend to ruin chalkboards if the words or design is left on for a long period of time. If you don't care then it's whatever but if you do care I would get standard colored chalk (don't be cheap on the chalk) and if you dip the tip in a little water you will get the smoothest lines and it'll easily wash when you're done.

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The board in my picture is actually a piece of glass that I painted with chalkboard paint. But I bought some wood boards off of Michaels 2 weeks ago when they had 40% off everything! Hobby lobby, Michaels, and even Amazon have some great options to look at!

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That is the mistake I made with the one piece of wood that I did try on. I didn't sand it mainly because I felt like it was pretty smooth but once I started staining it, I realized quickly that it wasn't. I think that I may use our cricut to do vinyl lettering for the wood signs, and the chalkboard ones I may be able to do myself. Thank you for all of your help!