Homemade Coffee Sign Tutorial~ GUEST POST

Dear friends, I'm so excited! Manuela from the fantastic home making blog A Cultivated Nest is here to share her easy and frugal hand painted Coffee Sign Tutorial! Manuela has made a mission out of making do with the home you have now. Her blog is choc a block full of easy, frugal decorating ideas with practical charm and that warm, homey feeling. So sit back and enjoy this wonderful tutorial sure to inspire creative ideas of your own! Take it away Manuela!

Hi, I'm Manuela from A Cultivated Nest where I blog about gardening & making the most of the home you have now. I'm so excited that Deborah Jean asked me to share a project with you all!

  I'm going to show you how I made that hand painted “Coffee” sign. If you've ever priced hand painted signs on Etsy or eBay you know they can be pretty pricey. Well, they are really easy to make! 

  You need a piece of wood that you've painted in the color of your choice - I just used some aqua craft paint that I happened to have. Flat and satin is the best finish to use for this type of project. You are going to print out the words that you want on your sign. So what I do is open Word and start playing with the different fonts and sizes.  For this sign I used the Oldgate Lane Outline font and I changed the size to 200. The word "Coffee" is printed in landscape because otherwise you wouldn't be able to fit the whole word onto a sheet of paper at this size.  I just liked the font  and  had to try several different sizes before I found the one that would work with my piece of wood.

2.To transfer your word(s) onto your sign use either graphite paper which is what I did here or cover the back of your words with artists charcoal, crayon or press really hard so that an indentation is left. I’ve used all these methods and the graphite paper (Micheal's, Hobby Lobby, art stores etc.) has been the easiest to work with.

3. Use a dull pencil or something that’s not too pointy and trace over your printed out letters. You should have your board, graphite paper and printed out words in that order.

 4. Now that your letters are transferred, all you have to do is fill them in! You can use a brush or a paint pen if you think your hand isn’t steady enough for a paint brush. 

I’ve used them both and I find I like the paint pen better - it's easier for me to trace around the letters and then fill in. But if you like using a brush, a firm angled one is easiest to use in this application. 

 After your sign is dry, you can sand it as much or as little as you want to get a distressed vintage look. I sanded the edges and over the words. You can also seal it if you're going to put it in your garden.

Using this basic technique allows you to customize your sign any way you want. Plus these make great gifts or you can keep it for yourself! 

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