WOW!!! Thanks Chris. I am just getting started in the world of CNC, and purchased a hobby CNC machine. It came with a copy of EMC, but my home systems are Win7, so I have been searching for cheap or free (emphasis on free) tools to do similar activities in WIndows. It has been a long hard road. After viewing your instructable, I have downloaded: WIndows VM Player (free), the EMC2 iso for the virtual machine (free), Gimp (free), Inkscape (free) and Pycam (free). I am now running this workflow and have 1000 times the capabilities I had before. Thanks for your instructable.

Hi! Great tutorial!
It's also possible to make Gcode right from Inkscape using Gcodetools extension. It's built in Inkscape since v0.48, if you are using previous versions you can get Gcodetools extension here: http://cnc-club.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=35

Great set of starter information on generating gcode from pictures.

It is also possible to open dxf files in Inkscape to generate gcode.

Inkscape does allow drawing and lettering like for signs that is pretty easy instead of using Correl too.