DIY Wood Signs | Stencil | No Machine Needed

Today I would like to show you how I make my own

stencil

s without a

machine

to make beautiful handmade

wood

en

signs

. Here I have some mdf boards left over from another project along with some

wood

en sticks so along with some handmade templates I can make something beautiful for my house and I hope you do too so come and see. I have a white paint that is a base coat and primer for metal and wood, so I will use that as a base coat on my MDF board. You can use chalk paint. or any other type of paint that you have that is suitable for any color wood as well and I'm just putting a little bit on it and spreading it thinly to have a very thin layer of this, you can see the brush marks. and it was a pretty dry brush as I brushed it all out.

I let it dry, which didn't take long and now I'm going to add a little more texture and give it a little depth to try. Give it an aged painted wood look. I have a gray wood paint here, but if you don't have any, you can take some acrylic paint and add it to your white base paint, just grab a small tub and mix your color. I have a piece of thick wallpaper here, but some newspaper would do and we need to crumple it into a ball and we'll use that in a moment, so take a pretty dry brush of your gray paint and just add a few coats like this.

We're just adding some stripes of paint all over and then we take our newspaper or wallpaper and we're just going to blend this out, don't worry it looks a little messy right now, but we're going to add a few more layers and continue with this method until we get the desired effect for our distressed wood look. I'm using the paper to rub the paint on and then every once in a while I give it a whirl where the knots are. on the wood it would be once we're done with the grey, I come back with a little bit more white and repeat that process again, this way the layers and textures keep building up, I just do what feels right and rub that in.

We're going to place the

stencil

on top of this so it doesn't have to be too detailed, it doesn't have to be so contrasting, if you want you can paint it white, gray or whatever color you prefer. choice, I would just like to add this as a little more detail to the wooden sign, once you are happy or think you have done enough, just leave it as is, let it dry completely and then you can come back and take a look at it again once you've let it dry, so I'll just add a little more gray in the patches where I feel like I didn't add any in the first place, just to build up the layers and each time you do it it will be completely different, so each piece is completely unique, which I love, so at this stage I will let it dry.

Now I'm going to grab my wooden buttons and I need to clean mine as they appear. They're not new, so I'm going to do this with a little bit of warm soapy water and then cut them down to size so I can have a frame around our wooden sign. Of course, you can use a regular saw for this. some wood stain that I'm going to stain them with, it's brown and I wanted it to be a little bit darker so I added some black acrylic paint and I'm just going to take an old rag. and I'm just going to apply this with a brush and that way at the end we can throw the rag away and we don't have to wash it so this is a mixture of the brown stain and the black acrylic paint that you can also leave them bare or you can add a clear sealant on top, just make sure to rub it with the grain of the wood.

I let them dry and now I'm going to go back to our baseboard and I would just like to. to warm it up a little bit because we did it white and gray, I'm just taking my sandpaper and I'm just removing a little bit of paint so we see just little bits of that brown mdf wood underneath and it just gives it a little bit more character and it's going to look great in the end. I have some wood glue here, if you don't have any you can use some pva glue or white craft glue and you just want a very thin layer on the back. of the canes and we're just going to put them all in place, line them up nice and neat and all the way to the edge not forgetting the ends, put the whole frame in place and let it dry with some heavy weights to get it to stick. good for done, when we are going to nail it in a moment, I let it dry alone for about an hour and now we can nail it in place so that it is nice and secure, we can use our nails, you can use the hammer and nail or if you have a nail gun like this, then it's good, quick and easy.

Nail everything around making sure the canes don't come loose all the way around the edge and making sure we go through the canes and not through the center. the wood, so it's all nailed, I just need to finish off the edges, I'm going to trim this little edge and then I'm going to stain all the way around to make sure it's all stained, and now we're going to create the templates for our fountain, pick a word, I drink coffee and then I go into any application on the computer as a beginner, it's easier to use a really bold font.

I am using this template font here. I know that my wooden frame has three pieces of landscape copy paper inside. side by side, so I know that's the size I want to create and since I have six letters here, I can add two letters on each sheet of copy paper. If you have a smaller sign, calculate how many sheets of copy paper you need below. each other and print the size of your word or design accordingly, take the printed paper to your sign and make sure it fits before cutting and then you can always make any necessary adjustments at this stage you can cut out your card template if that is what you have, a nice thick card would work, but I'm going to use these acetate sheets.

These are actually the ones that are recycled from the front of the brochures, so if you can't go out and buy something, maybe see what you have. in your house that you could use, so it's just a very thin plastic that you can cut with a knife to get a cutting board or a very thick piece of cardboard and you want to tape your template with the design that we printed. on the computer and take the thin plastic and tape this down. Also grab a sharp knife or scalpel and we're going to cut out the inside sections of the stencil so that when we add the paint we can paint inside those letters.

Take your time and follow all those lines as clearly and precisely as possible. This is a really good way to create a template so we can create the same sign over and over again if you want, so you don't have to go. and trace the words or use a cricut or any of the other

machine

s that you can use and we just do it ourselves and create something really wonderful and just take your time and very carefully pull out all those pieces. I find it. It's easier to move the board as I go, so I'm cutting more or less in the same direction the entire time, just towards me, like this, making sure to keep my hand well out of the way.

I find it quite easy to cut. acetate, but if you can't try it on thin card or thin cardstock first and see how it goes, acetate is great because it's more durable, so there we have it to start and continue. until you have all your letters, which I did, I just made a c, a, an f and an e and I'll use the f and the e twice. I really enjoy this part of the process and I hope you do too. give up, keep trying if it's a bit difficult and take your time and do a little bit each day if you have to.

I have all four of my templates now and I'm going to go back to my wood sign and I'm basically marking the center and then I'm also going to mark the center of my template and then we can easily line it up. You can always draw a line with pencil to give yourself a guide for the bottom of each letter. Make sure the letters will fit and then stick on with washi tape. I don't use it here, but you can get a temporary adhesive spray that you can spray on the back of the stencil to ensure none of the paint bleeds through for the letters I'm using. acrylic paints and I'm trying to create a similar color to my border, obviously make whatever text color you want, it can match your home decor, I just find that a nice contrasting color with the background works great, you can take a flat tip brush and use it. a stippling effect and apply it with a dry brush or you can use like I'm doing here a small sponge, just take small amounts at a time and you can test it on a sheet of paper and we're going to add this to the stencil, you really don't want too much paint on the sponge at a time so it doesn't leak if you're worried about this, like I said, you can use the non-permanent hairspray, can you notice my mistake?

I'll show you. that in a minute maybe you can point it out. I didn't notice it at the time, so continue sponging and very gently filling in all the text. If you make a mistake like I made here, you can take some sandpaper and sand it down. Let it dry completely and that's the great thing about acrylics, they dry very quickly and then you very carefully remove the tape, lift the stencils and they are ready to use again on another project. Hopefully, you'll have nice, clean lines. None of the paints bleed through much, they will never be perfectly crisp lines unless you use fixative, but I really like the effect of these stencils.

I missed that little section on the f, so I'm going to jump in. and add that and then put two e's next to those and did you notice my mistake? maybe you have maybe you haven't. I wasn't that aware of it at the moment, but when I put it on the wall, I noticed it. I'm really happy with how it's going so far and I can't wait to put it in my kitchen because we're going for that worn out sign. I feel like I like to take some very light sandpaper and just do it very lightly over the letters so that it matches the background there and affects it a little bit.

If you wanted to apply two coats of acrylic paint and let it dry between coats to create a darker coat then you can obviously do that, so my mistake is simple and clear, I put the c backwards. Good lesson, always make sure you have the stencil in the correct position before adding paint. I did a quick fix with the c and then added a little more detail with the stroke and painting method that I use in some of my other videos, you can add a top coat of varnish or lacquer on top or some mod podge or just something to seal it and then you can attach it to the wall with some string or a bit. stand on the back and I think it looks really cool.

I'm very happy with it and I hope you try it too thanks for watching, bye for now.