Sign Making

I thought I'd give you a little tutorial on how I made the sign for Maximus in this post.

I started with an unfinished piece of wood that I purchased at JoAnn Fabrics with a 50% off coupon. Then I mixed together several colors of acrylic paint, to get this brown shade.

I typed up the name Maximus in a word document on my computer, using the font, Monotype Corsiva at a size of 250 and measured the sign and the name to get the right placement.

The 's' in Maximus didn't fit onto one sheet of paper, so I taped it to the rest of the name. In retrospect, I should have used Legal size paper so that all the letters would have been printed on one line. I think it would have made it straighter...the 's' was a little slanted.

Next, I used a Conte Crayon and colored on the backside of the name.

Then I flipped it over and placed the name on top of the wood sign and traced around the letters.

 After I traced over the outside edges of the letters, there was an imprint and light transfer from the conte crayon that was transferred to the board. I went back with a pencil and traced over that mark directly onto the piece of wood, so that it was more visible; however I wouldn't recommend doing this again. I noticed that the pencil showed through some of the paint, so I had to go back over and touch it up.

I ended up adding a little bit more "curl" to the letters, mostly to cover up some mistakes. I finished off with a coat of gesso to give it a matte finish and to seal it.

And that's it! I've tried using stencils in the past, but wasn't happy with the results. It never seemed to give me clean edges around the letters. The paint tended to seep underneath and then I had to go back and clean up the lines.

Have you seen Your Susie Harris' site? She is SO talented at making signs and has been inspiring to me! Make sure you take a look at some of her work here.

Happy day!

hi-d

check out my other blog @ Proverbs for Every Day