Custom DIY Outdoor Wood Sign / Lettering

In this instructables, Jen creates some vinyl letters with her Cricut machine and uses them to create a custom sign for our homestead, Evergreen Farm.

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Step 1: Make and Place the Lettering

Use a Cricut Machine to cut/print out your vinyl letters. Then make sure the board you plan to place the letters on is very clean and dry, otherwise the vinyl letters will NOT stick. Once the board is clean and dry snap a chalk line to ensure your letter placement is straight.

TIP: Try "dry" fitting the letters before you stick them into place. Make sure you have the proper sizes for the board and the spacing works out. Our letters came up a bit short in terms of board width- so we simply cut a few inches off the right side of the board so that the spacing between the last letter and right side of the board was equal with the spacing between the first letter and left side of the board... try to make sure your letters come up a bit short VS going over.. you can always remove a bit of board, but you cannot add more board on if your letters end up too wide.

Step 2: Paint the Sign and Peel the Letters!

After all the letters are firmly "stuck" into place you can start painting.. BUT be sure your letters are really in place well. Any gaps or looseness could result in paint seeping under the vinyl letters and ruining the desired outcome. A few of our letters wouldn't sit firmly so we used some "tacky" spray which worked well. You don't want to rush this part.

We used spray paint- which works well with smooth, even strokes. We tried painting a dark stain on another project and it seeped under the lettering-- spray paint seems to work best.

After the paint dries comes the FUN part.. there is just something about peeling those letters off and revealing the nearly finished product, which makes this all worthwhile!

After the letters are peeled and the paint is thoroughly dried, apply several coats of sealer (poly urethane).

Step 3: Add an Optional Rain Guard

We really want our sign to last and stand up to the weather. Besides multiple coats of poly/sealer we also added a metal rain drip edge to the top. We left a bit of a gap between the drip edge and the sign and we may add an LED rope light in a future project!

Step 4: Hang the Sign

Carefully install your sign and sure to use a level! To be extra safe we applied one more coat of poly/sealant.

Enjoy! We plan to add lights in a future project and oh yeah....the garden behind the sign! We have our chickens all set next to this garden and we plan to build the garden once it warms up a bit.

Learn more about our family homestead and enjoy more HomeStead projects at HomeSteadHow.com!