For a long time, I have wanted a sign above my mantel for the Christmas season.  Every year, I decorated my mantel but didn’t change the artwork on the wall.  I wanted something “Christmasy” there and decided to try and make my own sign.  Should I mention that I don’t like to paint?  It makes me anxious.  However, this paint job was so easy that in the end I wonder why it took me so long!

A year ago, Gary made me the sign out of a wooden pallet he had in the garage and painted it for me because I needed it white instead of the raw wood color.  (You don’t need to paint the wood, I just preferred that for where I intended to place the sign.)

After fretting over this project for a year and building up enough courage to get over my  paint “phobia”, it took no time at all!

To start, I made a smaller sample sign (which you will see below) on my computer to decide the font type and size as well as overall lettering placement.  This part took the longest for me.  Once I had that figured out, I printed out the words for my large sign using mirror or reverse image and placed them on the wood, securing with tape.   I used a ruler to make sure it was straight.  If you have one of those laser levelers, that would work great too. 

Then, once lettering is placed, I dampened the paper slightly with water on the lettering that I printed with my ink jet printer.  On the lettering printed with a laser printer, I used 100% acetone.  The type of printer will determine if you use water or acetone.  Be careful not to over moisten the paper, I just dabbed the acetone/water on till the lettering showed through and was quite visible.  You can see how the lettering darkened when wet.

Using a ruler, credit card, or closed sharpie, rub the lettering onto the board.  I should mention the acetone will not work on the ink jet and water will not work on the laser printed stuff.  I did a little of both for experimentation.

Just do one word at a time and slowly go over each word.

Now here’s where things got interesting.  The laser printed ones worked well with the acetone, the ink jet/water was not working for me.  You may notice the very faint “us a” before the word Child.  I am pretty certain it was because my ink jet printer has the cheaper type of ink and not the name brand stuff.  Since my laser printer wasn’t available, I had to go to plan B for those words that didn’t come out dark enough.

Side note:  the reason “Child” didn’t come out darker is because the wood is rougher in that area.  So be sure to sand your wood down to a smooth texture.

Here was the technique I ended up using for those smaller words.

Remember this from elementary school?  I printed out the words that didn’t show up dark enough on my printer.  I turned the paper over and on the back side, I shaded over the area where the words were printed with a pencil.  (Above you can see I am shading over the words “us a”.)

Then after shading the back side of the words, I positioned them onto the wood, secured with tape and started tracing over those letters.

The words “for”, “us a” and “is” (which you can’t see in the above pic) were done with the shading technique.  The larger words and “Isaiah” part were done with the acetone/laser printer way.

Now the fun begins!  Since I do not have a steady hand and feared using a paint brush, I opted for a paint pen and went over the lettering to darken it all.

I want to point out in the above picture, you can see my smaller sample page that I mentioned before.

Here’s the finished product.  I added a star, which I just used a ruler to create the lines and painted it in but you could print one out and use one of the lettering transfer techniques.

I just love the way it turned out and can’t wait to decorate my mantel for Christmas!