DIY {knock off} wall art

everyday1 When I saw this “every day i love you” wooden sign hanging in a local home design store, I totally fell in love.

Then I looked at the price tag, and totally almost fell over!

It was $199!!

I know it’s precious, but $199 ?!? Seemed a bit pricey to me.

Of course I had to Google “every day I love you sign” when I got home, and to my surprise I saw similar signs listed at well over $200, the most expensive being $285 !!

Hey, if you love it and can afford it, then by all means.

I loved it but wouldn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t….so I decided to try and make one myself.

For a LOT less!

Actually, mine was only about $25 since I used paint and other supplies I already had on hand.

As you probably know, typography is SO popular, with so much inspiration online, Etsy, in catalogs, etc.

So, I didn’t feel all that guilty making a similar sign for myself.

I wasn’t planning to sell this, rather make this sweet sign for my husband Michael’s birthday, which was January 3rd.

I know, right after Christmas.

Ugh.

Luckily for me though, Michael had a quick business trip which left me just enough time to work on it.

perfect!

~~~~~~~~~~~

Here’s how I did it.

Because I was crunched for time, I started with pre-cut wood from Lowes.

Yeah, I could have made it a lot cheaper if I had cut the wood myself, but like I said, time was a factor, plus it was fa-reezing outside!

So, here’s what I bought.

These wood pieces come in various widths, lengths and wood types.

While I was at Lowes, I laid pieces of wood on the floor to figure out the size I wanted to make my sign.

{ this totally helped me and eliminated any over buying and waste }

These pre-cut wood pieces are perfect and are “as smooth as a babies be-hind”.

Butt (pun intended), I wanted more of an aged look for my sign.

So…I decided to bang them up a bit.

I used an old chain and hammer from our shed and got busy beating up the wood.

This worked perfectly and it was rather fun!

Next, I assembled my pieces together….

I used 2 smaller pieces as my “stringers” (my husband gave me this word, it’s basically the main beams that hold it all together).

I used wood glue under each stringer, then nailed them into place (this is the backside of my sign obviously).

{ I also used longer nails on the front side of my sign for extra strength }

After the glue dried, I flipped my sign over, primed and painted it using Pantone paint in Gardenia…love it btw.

Lowes carries Pantone paint in lots of colors for only $9.99 a quart!

It’s a great paint, especially for painting furniture.

Oh, and it distresses so well! Almost like chalk paint...really!

Next, I printed the words and cut them out.

To make certain they were straight, I used my Black and Decker Bullseye tool.

We’ve had this tool for years and it works great for finding studs (wall stud ladies!), but also for ensuring you are hanging pictures straight on the wall with it’s cool laser.

So, once my words were straight, I placed a piece of tracing paper underneath each, taped and traced each letter.

This technique works amazingly well.

Time for paint!

I mixed some paints…greens with blues.

Painted my letters, and let it sit to dry overnight.

The next day, I used my Dremel to cut the excess wood from both sides of my sign.

I also used the sanding head of my Dremel to sand off some of the wording color, as well as around the edges, etc.

Notice how I didn’t paint the sides ??

I knew I would be covering them up, so why bother ?!?

I glazed over the entire sign using Ralph Lauren glaze {smoke}, to even further age my sign.

Originally, I was going to use some new wood for my “frame”, but then I decided to use some naturally organic weathered snow fence that I had collected from the beach previously and had on-hand.

The color was perfect and I didn’t have to do a darn thing to it, other than cut it to size.

{ I just used little nails to adhere the frame, sorry I didn’t take pics }