Here's Your Sign!

The other title for this post could have been: How To Take A Simple Project & Complicate the Hell Out Of It... you've been warned.

Let me start off by saying, I LOVE Pinterest!!!
 

If you know what Pinterest is, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. (And you can find me here, I have some pretty cool boards!)  If you don't have a Pinterest, email me and I'll send you an invite! 

Alright, back to business. 

I have a Pinterest board where I have a lot of inspirational quotes.

source

I loved this quote as it brought back a childhood memory of sliding down a mud hill with my brother, Jonathan and our cousin, Shane. We had a blast until the grown ups found out what we were up to and ruined our fun.


Of course I had to come up with a way to use this awesome quote.

I used it to make a laundry room sign!

Okay, so I don't technically have a laundry room but I do have a laundry area and I think this looks great hung up next to my clothespin mirror.

  

Wanna see how I totally screwed it up did it?

Supplies:
wood piece (or whatever you're painting your sign on) 
ink (do NOT use ink unless you want to use the sander... trust me)
paint
paintbrush
crackle medium
stencil or contact paper to make your stencil
sander (optional - in case you screw up) 
pendleton & pepsi (optional - in case you screw up)
a few choice curse words (optional) 



I started with a blank wooden sign plaque that I got at Michael's. 

 I painted a base coat of basic white paint. 

When that was dry, I painted two coats of Desert Turquoise. 

When my sign was good and dry, I applied the stencil that I'd cut out on contact paper using my Awesome Silhouette Machine. I used a brown stamp pad and paper towel to apply the stenciled design.

Once my design was applied, I peeled the stencil off. And let it dry. 

Now here's where things went horribly, horribly wrong...

I wanted to apply a crackle and use either the ink or paint to stain the sign, but as soon as I applied the crackle, the ink smeared EVERYWHERE. I really should have known better, especially since I did buy a really cheap ink pad. Amazing Boyfriend thought I should have known better because I have an amazing talent for taking really simple projects and complicating the hell out of them.

So what's a girl to do?

Bust out the sander (for the first time ever!), sand it down and start again. I did all the same steps, but this time, I used craft paint. Then I used crackle, then paint and antiquing medium to stain the sign and make it look kinda dirty. I was so happy with how it looked! Just how I wanted it to turn out...

almost...

Do you see it?

Seriously?!?!

When it was drying, one of Amazing Boyfriend's friends was over visiting and pointed out my spelling error. ABF looked at me with a funny little look, knowing that by this point I probably just wanted to chuck the damn thing in the creek behind our house to destroy the evidence. I just sighed, knowing that I was going to spend more bonding time with the sander, because I was bound and freakin' determined to do it right this time!

So I sanded it down (again), realized that I should just flip the damn thing over and paint the other side, painted it (again), applied crackle (again) and antiqued it (again). This time victory was mine!!!

See, I told you I'm really good at taking an easy project and complicating the hell out of it!


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