Hand-Painted French Kitchen Sign...SO EASY!

I originally created this as a guest post over at Hani's Craftionary. Would love to share it with you as well!

I've got a trick to show you to transfer any saying from plain old printer paper to wood.

{And how to "fancy" it up with sandpaper & love}.

You could also use vinyl for this, but probably couldn't rough it up as much!

I started with an old piece of wood...thinking it was from a shorter fence by the nail-markings.

I painted it with a lovely shade of "Bimini Blue" in an acrylic paint.

To create my "wordy fun", I measured the sign and created a document in that size in Photoshop Elements. I tile printed it to keep my dimensions in tact. 

{You could easily do this in any word-processing document...just keep in mind the dimensions of your sign and print as many sheets as you'll need to cover it!}

BTW, this says "The French Market", I used Google's Translate to make sure I had it right (apparently four years of French class waaaaaay back in high school got me nowhere. C'est fou.)

 After printing & trimming the edges, I used painter's tape to adhere it to my sign.

 

And then...{my little trick from my college days}, trace your words with a fine tipped pen. Press fairly hard so you can make an indention into the wood through the paper. 

Whoops...I had to leave off the fancy French doo-hickey. Size-wise, I wanted the tall letters to not be too high on the sign.

 

After you've pulled off your paper, you'll see the grooves your pen left. 

For an extra-measure {and because my 30-something-year-old eyes aren't what they used to be}, I outline the letters with a pencil directly on the wood. 

Then I fill in my letters with plain black acrylic paint. The grooves from the pen help the paint stay within the letter's perimeters. (You can see that some of my paint was pulled off by the tape...that's fine since I messed her up with some sand paper later!)

After the letters were completely dry, I went a little crazy with the palm sander. 

My husband drilled three holes in the back for hanging it.

 And there she is!

(Although a wee-bit crooked in this photo), this is where she went in my breakfast area.

~The French Market~

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