Shabby wooden signs

An easy peasy way to make a cute shabby wooden sign. They cost almost nothing and can be a sweet addition to any room. I made mine in literally 2 hours, and that's including the drying time for the paint!

All you need is:

• Salvaged wood
• Craft Paint or Acrylic Paint
• Inkjet Printer
• Marker Pen
• Varnish

I found some salvaged wooden planks off old pallets at work. Seriously I love pallets! The possibilities to use them for all sorts of DIY are endless!

Anyway so I cut the pallet planks to size and lightly sanded them. You can distress your wood more by banging on it with a hammer if you want, but your letters might be a little bit more of a mission to transfer then.

I paint my boards white, I wanted that white washed look so I did it REALLY quickly and didn't care if the wood came through in most places... that's part of the appeal right? But hey you can paint it any colour you like.

I then printed my words using the INKJET printer onto normal paper, remember to mirror image them. Cut off the excess white paper so that you can fit it nicely to your plank.

Once your paint is nice and dry, place your printed word face down. Using water and paintbrush slightly wet your paper. Be careful not to wet it too much otherwise your words will smudge or the ink will run.



Using the back of a marker pen (or any pen really) scratch or rub over the letters to transfer the word.

My first word came out a bit smudged (because of too much water) but I learnt my lesson and the other two came out perfectly! You could use watered down craft wait to fill in the letters if you want, but I loved the way the letters actually looked like they were drawn onto the wood.

You can use a spray varnish or any other wood varnish you have to finish it off and seal it, just make sure that your words and wood are dry so that you don't smudge them. I like I like! Now to get some nice rope and drill the holes. Will add another pic when it's actually hanging :-)