{DIY Vintage Quote Sign}

Hey, y'all!  I know my post today is a little later than normal, but I wasn't able to get the pictures I needed for my post yesterday because it was cloudy and raining off and on during the day.  But I snapped a few this morning and finished my post in time for lunch!  I want to share my awesome new piece of art that I made with you.  (If you follow me on Instagram, you've seen sneak peeks.)

This is my new vintage sign.  ;)  I made it myself, and while it takes a while to make, it's a pretty easy process that most anyone can do with a little bit of patience.

I started the whole process with this board I bought from Lowe's for around $7.

I knew from the beginning that I wanted this sign to look vintage, and I knew that part of that was having layers of paint.  The first layer of paint was a bunch of different shades of turquoise/aqua.  I just squirted a lot of the paint in different places on the board and spread it all out with a brush.

I squirted more paint where I needed it, and finished blending it all.  When the paint dried, I covered the entire board with two coats of white paint.  While that dried, I worked on my quote.

This quote comes from "Desert Song" by Hillsong.  It really stuck with me when I first saw it, and I knew I had to have it somewhere in my house.  I used PicMonkey and fonts that I downloaded for free to create a graphic the size of my board.  (I also used a couple of free graphics from Happily Ever After.  I used one of her Free Hand Drawn Embellishment Graphics and one of her Free Vintage Borders.)  I then used Word to print it out.  It almost took me just as long to figure out how to print the large graphic as it did to make the sign!  Ugh.  there are lots of tutorials online to show you how to do tiled printing.  None of the ones I found used the versions of Photoshop or PowerPoint that I have.  I finally ended up just cropping the image and printing it out on individual sheets manually.  I would have to do an entire different tutorial to explain how I did it.  If you'd like one, just let me know, and I'll work on it.  :)

I pieced the sheets together and scribbled on the back of the words so that I could trace them onto the board.

I taped the graphic down and traced it with a ballpoint pen.

You can see in the pic above how the trace graphic turned out.  Then I meticulously painted in the letters.

After the sign dried, I sanded it.  This is definitely the scariest part of the project.  You're essentially messing up all the work that you just did, but even though it's a little scary, it's totally worth it.

See what I mean?  The sanding is part of what makes the sign look vintage, and it allows the bottom layer of paint and even some of the wood to peek through the white paint.

Then to enhance the vintage look even more, I used a rag to wipe stain all over the sign.  I used the tiniest bit--just enough to age the sign even more.

I then sanded off some of the stained places a little just to make sure that the letters popped.

I waxed the entire sign.  The last step was that I ripped down some screen porch molding to create a wooden "frame" to go around the sign.  I stained the pieces of molding and glued and nailed them around the sign to give it a more finished look.

I LOVE my new vintage sign.

What I like most about it is that it really looks vintage!

I'm more than likely going to hang it above my mantel, but I just leaned it agains the mantel for now. I attempted to decorate a bit around it for these pictures.  I have so much trouble with "staging" tables and mantels and such.  I think it's because I'm so indecisive.  Or maybe it's just because I know how I want it to look, but can't quite get that look?  I don't know.  I hope that it'll look better when I finally hang the sign though.  So what would your vintage sign say if you made one? Need more inspiration for decorating your walls?  Check out all my art posts {HERE}. RELATED POSTS:

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