Hello! I had a crazy week last week and didn't get much blogging done. I had to help my son McKay recover from Shoulder Surgery. He's doing pretty good, he's been a good patient! Parker delivered an outstanding tribute to mothers in his Seminary class that I got to attend and our little Ava graduated from Preschool! Not to mention the cards my kids made me and pampering from my husband on Mother's Day, What can I say, I was a proud mom all week long!
I'm excited to share with you a fun sign you could make to accent a Boy's or Girls Athletic Themed Room!
I made this Baseball sign for my son who loves everything to do with Baseball!
The finished sign measures 16 1/2 in. by 16 1/2 in.
I took One pine board measuring 5 1/2 inches wide by 8 feet long. ( I didn't end up using the whole 8 feet).
I pre-stained and painted my board before I cut it. I stained it first with a dark stain. When that dried I painted it white. I did this so when you sand down some of the white in places, the stain shows through giving it a weathered or worn look.
Using a miter saw, I cut 3 boards each measuring 16 1/2 in long.
I laid all 3 boards side by side.
I cut two scrap boards 14 in long. These acted as my braces to hold the three boards together from the back. I used some wood glue and glued the boards across all three boards at the back to hold them all together. If you need to, you can also brad nail these 2 brace boards into the three boards to anchor them better.
Once the glue dried, I flipped the sign over and roughly sketched out where I might want the stencils to appear
In Silhouette studio I created my stencils using the reverse or negative space for the stencil. I wanted to have some baseball treads, but I needed to create my own. I wanted something that resembled a tread of a baseball.
I created a stencil using a download of leaves from a tree download. I chose one leaf, resized it to about 1/2 in. long and rotated it to the angle I needed it. I next copied it and made another one exactly across from it, rotating it in the other direction kind of resembling the letter V. Still in Silhouette studio, I next copied and pasted that pair over and over, rotating the pair as I made a quarter circle arch until I had what I needed.
To make sure I had enough stencils for each corner, I cut two sets of stencils per corner, for a total of 4 stencils. Each measuring around 5 1/2 in. long. I did not use all of the tread stencils. I over lapped them and had to trim them down.
I used the same stencil design for the upper and lower corner stencils.
I cut all of my stencils using vinyl this time.
I laid out my stencils. They did overlap each other in each of the corners. I just lined them up and trimmed them until they fit a perfect quarter circle arch. The top tread starts at roughly the middle center of the entire sign and ends roughly 5 1/2 inches down from the top on the right side. The lower tread begins in the middle of the bottom of the board and ends roughly 5 1/2 inches up the left side.
stuck the vinyl down and painted in the treads with red paint.
I peeled off the stencil to reveal the tread!
I also made our last name out of a College or athletic font. The font i used was called Princetown. It measures 2 1/8 inches high by 9 1/2 inches long. Once the treads were stenciled on, I laid out the name stencil. It is about 5 1/2 inches down from the top of the board.
This athletic font had a middle filler that I also had to stick in the middle of each letter to create the white space.
I painted over it in black
peeled that off to reveal the name
I cut out the number 33 as a stencil because that is the number my son plays. Each number measures 2 1/4 inches wide by 3 1/2 inches high. I centered the stencil of the 33 roughly 8 1/2 inches from the top and in the center of the sign . Repeated the same steps as I outlined above for doing a stencil, stuck the vinyl on, and painted it in with red, peeled off the stencil to reveal the numbers!
I did do a little bit of touch up work freehand with a small paint brush where the stencils bled through, but for the most part, it was pretty easy to do! When that was finished, I sanded the edges and in various places to make it look weathered!
This will be a great accent to a Boys or Girl's athletic themed room!
It was his birthday a couple weeks ago, so I put the sign up on our old window/shutters and put a banner across that I used for his birthday last year..
With Much Love & Gratitude,
