People are so creative and clever. I swear, every time I get on Pinterest I am totally excited, yet I also feel like a total idiot because I think, how did I not think of that? That’s a great idea, easy, cheap, cool, whatever. That is exactly what I thought when I saw Shayna’s post for her Huge Welcome Sign on The Woodgrain Cottage. I have a large porch and didn’t get hay bales this year to decorate for fall so I thought this sign would be great. I didn’t really follow her tutorial, just used her awesome idea, but I ended up with a result I was happy with…..although I’m still working on my porch decorating skills.
Anyway, the materials I used were as follows: long plank of wood, glue gun, chipboard letters, and black and white spray paint. The wood I found in our garage. I have no idea why it was laying around, but I didn’t ask questions and I snagged it. It was originally about 8ft long, so I cut about 2ft off , but you can choose whatever height and width you want or have laying around. Just make sure it’s wider than your letters. My wood wasn’t very “weathered” looking so I sprayed it with this cheap white spray paint from Lowes. The paint is only $1 and it always takes 2-3 coats to actually paint anything white (you get what you pay for I guess) but it’s perfect to give new wood a little bit of weather.
I was originally going to buy wooden letters but the big ones weren’t on sale, I didn’t want to spend $20 bucks, and I didn’t want to wait (imagine that). Luck was on my side and I found these chipboard letters in the dollar section at Micheals, with all the letters that I needed (score!!). I painted them black and then glue-gunned those babies to the wood.
Okay, here is where I ran into problems. About 10 minutes later, I noticed one of the letters fell off, so I put some more glue on it and stuck it back on. Five minutes later another fell off, and another, and another. Well you get the picture. After about five letters, I realized that my beloved glue gun wasn’t going to do the job so I broke out the wood glue and went to town. I fixed all the letters and they’ve been stuck in place ever since.
After cutting some old grass from a bush in my backyard and throwing some pumpkins in the mix, I have a decorated fall front porch.
So easy and I figure I can use this sign all year round. For Christmas I am going to flip the wood around and put “Noel”, or “Joy”, or something equally festive. Stay tuned and I’ll post what I decide to do. Let me know if you make one of these and send me your pictures.
