Merry and Bright Blocks (Dare to Deck the Halls)

Here we are at our final week of Dare to DIY 2014! This week’s theme is Dare to Deck the Halls--make sure to hop over to Newly Woodwards today to share YOUR handmade holiday décor, and visit cohosts Décor and the Dog and Shift Ctrl Art to see their projects, too!

I always start the Christmas season with all sorts of grand decorating ideas. And every year, reality sets in before I even take a single step forward, and I realize I don’t have the time or the money or the energy to make all my big dreams happen. So we generally keep things pretty simple around here for Christmas. That works fine for me.

A week or two ago, my sister Bekah and I got together to do some Christmas crafts (thankfully, it went better than our Halloween craft day). We each did a spin on a ‘merry & bright’ decoration. Bekah’s project actually came out way, way cuter than mine, but I don’t have pictures of hers, so you’re stuck with my version of merry & bright today. I’ll see if I can take some pictures of her sign to show you this week. It’s adorable.

I found these two pieces of scrap wood in my garage, and thought they’d work perfectly to recreate this pin. I wanted to include a some gold in my Christmas decorating this year, so I started by painting one block white, and spray painting the other gold.

I used my Silhouette Portrait to cut the words out of vinyl, then transferred them to my blocks to use as a template. I used the gold spray paint to fill in the word ‘merry’ on the white block, and sponged white paint over the word ‘bright’ on my gold block.

After letting them dry (probably not long enough, actually—I suffer from a serious lack of craft patience), I went over them lightly with some sandpaper to give them a vintage look. And to hide the spots where I messed up. Distressing does wonders for hiding craft oopsies.

It adds a little glitz to my shelves for Christmas. Merry and bright, indeed.

Can’t wait to see what YOU made this year to deck your halls! Hop over to Newly Woodwards and add your project to the linkup!

Christmas Tree Wall Art by NewlyWoodwards // Merry & Bright Blocks by Maybe Matilda
Christmas Trees Sign by Décor and the Dog // DIY Mini Tree by Shift Ctrl Art

How I Made My Vintage-Style Groceries Sign

Last week, I showed off my new farmhouse kitchen table (if you missed it, you can see it HERE). The love burns on—I’m crazy about it and think it’s perfect in our kitchen. Big purchases are scary for me. This one worked out; no regrets. (So far.)

Seeing the new table in our dining space gave me a push to take on a project I’ve been thinking about for months and months. And since I love the modern farmhouse look ( <—is that a thing?), I thought a banged up, vintage-style sign could be perfect above the window. I waffled for months and months, wondering how it should look and what vaguely food-related word or phrase could go up there, then wondered how on earth to make the dang thing. But with the dual arrival or my new kitchen table and new Silhouette, it seemed like the time had finally come to go for it. I loved the look of this sign I found on Pinterest, and used it as a model for my own. So here’s how I made mine.

I started with a piece of scrap wood that’s been sitting in our garage for at least a year. Who knows where it came from. I bet it’s happy to finally have a purpose (other than having me occasionally run over it by accident with my car). It’s about 12.5” tall, and it was quite long—I had Jeff cut it down to about 54”. I gave it a very light coat of white paint and left it to dry while I set up my design for the Silhouette.

I planned to use vinyl to create a stencil, and I wanted to cut the stencil all in one big piece, but the Silhouette cut mat is definitely nowhere near the size of the wood I was using for my very long sign. A little googling revealed much coolness: you can tell the Silhouette that you aren’t using the cutting mat, and just feed the vinyl straight into it. You can adjust the height to anything you’d like and cut a gigantic design. Super cool.

In page settings, I set the height to 67” (which was way longer than I needed, as you can see——I scaled it back after I finished designing). I also selected ‘none’ for the cutting mat, and just inserted the vinyl right into the machine, straight from the roll.

I downloaded a new font that I thought had a great vintage look (I got it from Dafont.com and it is called Market Deco), and set up my letters just how I wanted them to look, then cut them from the vinyl.

My original plan was to lay the entire vinyl piece over my board, all in one go. This turned out to be way more difficult than I had anticipated. I believe Silhouette makes a transfer material so you can easily move vinyl pieces where you want them to be—I don’t have any of it. My solution was to cut my letters apart, then place them on my board one at a time, lining up the cut edges like puzzle pieces. I still think this worked better than cutting the letters individually—even though I laid them one at a time, they were spaced exactly how I’d designed them, so I could line up the cut edges perfectly. It worked great, although some letters were a bit finicky (I screwed up royally trying to save time by doing the C and E together, and ended up having to recut those two letters and do them again). I applied them all to my board and ran my finger over all the edges one final time before painting, just to be sure they were pressed down tightly. Then I used a sponge brush to lightly sponge black craft paint over the letters.

I wanted this sign to look old and worn and battered, so I didn’t worry about getting it perfect. My paint job was thicker in some areas and thinner than others, and I liked it that way. I didn’t go back over for a second coat or try and make sure everything was evenly coated. After painting all the letters, I peeled the vinyl off. A little tip: a seam ripper works beautifully to get into tight areas or to pull up smaller pieces.

At this point it was almost midnight, so I went to bed and let everything sit overnight. In the morning, I gave the whole thing a go-over with some sandpaper. I considered dry brushing some watered-down black paint around the edges to give it more ‘wear’—I still may. Our walls are technically gray, but they came out so much lighter than I’d planned and basically look white. And the sign is white, so maybe a little extra wear/color around the edges would help it stand out more. Maybe I’ll go back and change that someday, but I’m not sure if I care enough to re-start a finished project. Either way, here are the sanded-down letters up close:

I attached some photo-hanging hardware to the back of the board, and Jeff helped me hang it up above the window. I sure like it.

If you wanna see more of our kitchen renovation:

‘Before’ house tour
Initial kitchen changes
Adding color
DIY farmhouse table

10-Minute ‘Boo’ Sign + My Fall Decorating

I can almost hear my mom and sister laughing at the post title already—10 minute ‘boo’ sign!!! We got together last week to do some Halloween crafting, and I’ll just give you a quick run-down of our day . . .

Number of hours we spent together: 5
Number of projects Bekah planned to make: 4
Number of projects I planned to make: 0
Number of false starts and do-overs on just 1 single project: 50382
Number of pumpkin scones consumed: 6
Total number of projects Bekah completed: 0
Total number of projects I completed: 1

As a reminder, peek back up at the project plans—Bekah wanted to make 4 things, and I wasn’t going to make any. Yet somehow I ended up with the only project of the day, even though we spent 4 or 5 hours together. We are slow, easily distracted, very hungry crafters who take frequent snack breaks.

But—but! If we had actually had a plan for this sign, and known what we wanted it to turn out like, and just made the dang thing instead of fiddling around, changing our minds over and over about how it should look, messing things up and trying them again a different way, I bet it would have honestly been about a 10 minute project. So I’m just going to call it that. It’s just too embarrassing to title this post ‘My 4 hour ‘boo’ sign.’

At any rate, it was a very fun 4 hours (although there was minimal crafting involved), and I love how my little sign turned out. I used my brand spankin’ new Silhouette Portrait, and guys. This thing is fun. I have so many things I want to use it for, and so many ideas I’ve been hoarding and imagining for, quite honestly, a few years now. This is an exciting moment. But I figured I’d better start small while I get to know the machine and learn what it can do, and this sign was a great little intro. It’s a simple, fast, very basic project that turned out so sweet.

All I did was lightly paint a store-bought plaque (purchased from JoAnn with a 50% off coupon, so it came to about $4), then used spray adhesive to mount the letters on it (which I typed up and resized for my sign, then cut from cute paper with my Silhouette Portrait). I added two of these little spiderwebs in the corners, resized to fit perfectly behind my letters without too much overlap. A thick layer of mod podge over the whole thing, plus a little watered-down black paint sponged around the edges and flicked with a toothbrush over the front, and it was good to go!

For the little pumpkins, I just grabbed some cheap plastic pumpkins from a dollar store and slapped a few layers of white chalk paint on, then added some black dots with the non-bristled end of a paintbrush (for the small dots) and my fingertip (for the bigger dots). Makes for a cute little Halloween display, if I may say so myself.

Elsewhere in the house, I’ve stuck more to a fall theme instead of Halloween.

The window, lamp, Scentsy warmer, and wreath are always in this spot, so I just added a few little things to make it look a little more ‘autumn.’ I made the Halloween paper garland a few years ago, and am sort of amazed at how well it’s still holding up. I added candy corn to my DIY hurricanes (made with this tutorial), and tossed some moss and pumpkins (which I already had) into a planter that migrates throughout my house all year. A little burlap as a table runner and a leftover wood slice from my sister’s wedding this summer, and it looks all sorts of autumnal.

Outside, I got rid of my summer flowers in my planters (they were well past health anyway) and added some mums. I’m hoping they’ll fill out soon and look a little more lush. I think a fall wreath would look a little more appropriate on the door, but I haven’t seen any I’ve fallen in love with yet. The search continues.

If budget allowed, I’d have like 4 times as many pumpkins as you see here . . . but dang, those puppies add up fast! I’m now doubly impressed by porches that have dozens of pumpkins set out. Impressed once because they look so cheery, and again because they must have taken out a second mortgage to pay for them. Between the mums and the pumpkins, I spent about $20 out here. Inside, all I purchased was the plaque for the Boo sign, so my total money spent to decorate for fall is about $24. Not bad, I’d say.

How do you like to decorate for fall?