Making a sign

I love signs. Shops like Romantika and KK Home sell lots of that but I fancy none. I just feel that they are a bit too flowery, too 'new' and too fake. I prefer something which is handmade, correction, something which I make. So I decided to make one.

This is actually one of my projects which I did about a year ago. I have had some wooden planks leftover from my dining table project (which I will show in another post). The planks actually came from my MIL's friend's house and were originally used to support a mattress on a spring bed.We were given 6 in which 4 were used to make the dining table.

I started looking for inspiration pics. And I like this one. 'Boulangerie and Patisserie' is so frenchy and is in keeping with other stuff I already had around the house. I like :)  I had a perfect wall space for a sign like this i.e above my kitchen windows.

I wasn't sure whether to use the bare wood since it is already so rustic and paint the writings white. But I was worried that it would look to boring to my already plain interiors. So I've decided to go a bit bolder using black and gold colours instead! Except for the black spray paint which I already had from previous projects, I bought the gold paint (poster paint), a gold pen and a cheap brush from Popular.I looked for an appropriate font and found one called 'Oklahoma' which I downloaded free from the internet. The font is so classic. I love it. I printed the letters and cut/traced them with a pen knife. I kept both the cut out letters and the original printed papers.

First, spray painted the wood plank with the black spray paint (mine is matte / flat black). I only sprayed one side and kept the other side (the more rustic, scratchy side) untouched for future projects, in case I grew sick of the sign. I also purposely left the wood uncut and only cut it after I traced and measured all the letters.Then, I measure the height of the wood and made a line with a masking tape so that the letters would be nicely aligned.

We also made the dining room and the bench ourselves. 

Then, started the tracing. I used the gold pen.

Once all letters were traced, I cut the wood to its appropriate width. Then, filled the letters with the gold paint.  I also painted a border and the fleur-de-lis decorative logo in between the words.

Here's is the finish product. Sorry about the bad quality of the picture. I am yet to invest in a better camera and learn some fancy photographing techniques.

This is a very easy, cheap and definitely hand-made project done in a fun, creative, rainy weekend. Better than what they sell in shops, me think.