Thursday, October 18, 2012

Birthday Sign

Once again I spent another night working on a Pinterest project. I've always had trouble remembering peoples birthdays so when I saw this idea I thought it would be perfect. I have changed it from the one I saw online so I will give you my instructions in case you want to make one of your own :)
 
I want to first say that I am a big believer of reusing old things. The wood I used for this project came from an old outhouse building that is on my dads property. He's been wanting to take it down so this was the perfect opportunity to use some of the old wood. The home that this outhouse belongs to has been standing for over 100 years.
 
 
Now that I have some of the boards home, I've been wanting to start to make craft projects with them. So I started by picking one board that didn't have a crack in it. This wood is quite brittle so I needed to be very careful not to break the board in half.
 
 
The next step was to paint square and round pieces of wood that I purchased from Wal-Mart in the wood craft aisle. I wanted to make sure they would be dry by the time I needed to attach them. These pieces will used to write the names and dates on.
 
 
I took my letters that spelled birthdays and laid them out so I knew what size to cut my board down to.
 
 
Once I had it cut I could start to trace all my letters. I used a pencil and if you are going to try this project I wouldn't recommend using a mechanical pencil...the lead kept breaking.
 
 
After everything was stenciled I could start hand painting all the letters.
 
 
 
Now when I first started this project I didn't realize that my board wasn't going to be big enough to fit the word birthdays and the letters for each month so I had to improvise. I used another board and cut it the same size so I could put it behind the original board which would give me enough room.
 
 
 I used doubled sided tape to attach the two pieces together until I can get to the store to buy wood glue.
 
 
Now that I have a place for the first letter of each month I used hot glue to apply each letter to the board. I'm missing the first J for January so please forgive me.
 
I wanted these letters to be a different color so I added a layer of blue paint once they were attached.
 
 
Ok, so now that all the letters are in place and glued down it's time to start adding birthdays. I purchased eye screws to connect each of the wood pieces to each other.
 
 
 I drilled tiny holes to get each screw started on the main board.
 
 
Once the main screw was in place I added the first birthday.
 
 
 This next step is a little tricky and I might change this up the next time I make one of these. I took a small piece of double sided foam and squished the screw part into it and then put hot glue on top of that.
 
 
I kept repeating this with all of the birthday discs until they were all done. Some of them you will have to separate the eye so you can put it through the ring.
 
The last part is writing all the birthday dates and names. I have terrible handwriting so I might redo these but they are growing on me.
 
 
Here is the project almost complete. I still have pieces of wood that are drying but once I'm done I'll post another picture of it completed.
 
 
I hope everyone had a great day and that you are enjoying reading my blog :)





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