Hello all!! I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving and are all ready to dive into Christmas! We have been listening to Christmas music and tonight we’re going to watch a Christmas movie and start decorating the house. I’m so excited. :)

This is a re-post of my Candy Cane Christmas Sign that I posted over at Tatertots and Jello recently. I’ve added in a couple of pictures and instructions for more details – I tend to over-detail tutorials sometimes and I didn’t want to blast the readers over there with pictures. But I thought I’d add them back in for you (because you’re used to me doing that :), plus they include some of the products I used and I can enter it in the DIY Club monthly contest!

So with no further rambling, here’s the tutorial!

I have a fun Christmas Sign tutorial for you – my Candy Cane Kitchen Sign!

Isn’t it fun and vintage-y?
I got the inspiration for this sign from this super cute plate I found at Pier 1.

I just fell in love with the design but I decided I needed it on a bigger, grander scale.

Here’s what you’ll need to make your own:

• 1 – 1×6 piece of wood, cut into three 16″ pieces
• Glue
• Craft Paints & a variety of brushes
• Base Color Spray Paint
• Freezer Paper
• Exacto Knife and Cutting Board
• Sandpaper
• Iron
• Design Patterns – Click Here to Download
(I also have these patterns available in JPEG form if you have a Silhouette and would like to use them!)

I started off by recreating the design on my computer. Then I took each segment and made a separate paper pattern for each. You can skip that and use the Design Patterns I created if you want.

Cut your wood into three 16″ pieces.
(Which Mr. F.T. kindly cut for me and he later pointed out that I didn’t mention it in the Tatertots and Jello post. Since he apparenly felt the need to be famous too I am now mentioning it. Thanks honey for cutting the wood. He’s going to absolutely love that I did this. ;) 

Glue the three sections of wood together, along the long sides, so you make one large square.

Clamp the wood together while it dries.

You can skip this next step if you want, it’s your call.

Go out to the garage and check your wood – and realize you’ve glued it to the concrete.
Say some fake swear words and pry it up with the hugest screwdriver you can find. Nice.

Consider setting your boards on something else, or upright, while they glue.
Gorilla Glue expands as it dries. If you are more careful than I was, you can wipe the glue off as it expands and you won’t have this issue at all.

Once your boards are glued together, spray paint the front with your base color.

I used a Krylon Burgundy but it wasn’t quite dark enough, so I did three coats, one Burgundy, one Black, and the last Burgundy. That gave me the nice dark red color I was looking for, with the added benefit of another layer of color that will show when it is distressed.

I believe you could do several of these next steps with a Silhouette or other cutting machine. I do not have a magical machine so we’ll be doing this old school.

Cut out all your pattern pieces. You will need to tape several of the large pieces together since they are too big to print out on one sheet of paper. On the “Cane” Pages, I’ve left the outline of the word “Candy” so you will know how close together to place the words.

Layout everything on the boards to check your placement.

Trace the designs onto Freezer Paper. Leave enough room around the designs so that when you paint, there is plenty of Freezer paper around the stencil.

Paint your base colors on the sign with your craft paint.
The craft paint colors I used (all from Walmart) were Folk Art Calypso Sky (light turquoise), Cardinal Red (dark red) and Navy Blue (dark blue).

Cut out your stencils. I used an exacto knife on a self-healing cutting mat.

You don’t need to worry about the little snow marks or the windows. You can add those details back in by hand later.

Lay the tree stencil at the top of the board so that the bottoms of the trees just barely overlap into the red section.

Lightly iron on the stencil.

Here are some tips for ironing onto wood.

• You don’t want the iron super hot. It will cause the paint to bubble excessively. We want a little of this, because it will help with distressing, but not too much.
• Be careful to keep the iron on the freezer paper. Use the tip and sides if you need to. Paint WILL come off the wood and onto your iron if you iron on the painted section. If this happens use a balled up damp paper towel and wipe it off while the iron is hot.

Once the stencil is in place, paint the trees and house red (Cardinal Red).

While that is drying you can do the same thing with the Kitchen and Bakery stencil.  I did the little stars by hand, and I used the same light turquoise paint (Calypso Sky) that was at the top.
For the letters that had pieces inside (B, E, and A) I cut those little pieces out separately and then placed them in position before I ironed it on.

After you paint in the designs, lift the stencil. You could have some base paint come off, because of the ironing. This is fine. Saves work later.

There is a chance that the paint will leak under the stencil just a bit. Once the paint dries, just go over the edges a bit with the color below and paint over those little sections with a tiny brush. This will clean everything up.

In this picture you can see the stars, the snow on the trees, and the windows of the house. You can also see where some paint came up with my stencil. Cool huh?

Next steps are the large green circle, the candy cane, and the snowflake on the top right.

 For the candy cane, I stenciled in a lighter red(FolkArt Apple Red) than the base red, and then painted the white(FolkArt Wicker White) stripes by hand. You could make two stencils if you don’t want to free hand it, and then stencil the white once the red has dried.

Once the green(FolkArt Fresh Foliage) circle has dried, stencil on the other snowflake.

 Last stencil – the Candy Cane lettering!

 That looks pretty awesome, but it’s way too “new” looking. Time to distress! Or in other words – scrape off some of your previous hard work. ;)

For the distressing, I sanded all four edges. I used smallish pieces of freezer paper at different parts on the sides and ironed them on, then pulled the paint off.

Then I sanded some of the lettering and shadows. If you look closely you can see that I sanded a shadow around the Capital C in “Cane”. You can also do extra sanding on the places the boards are seamed together and any knots or irregularities in the wood.
I finished with a light sanding in both directions over the whole sign. Don’t go all in one direction with your overall sanding. It wouldn’t distress that way normally and will look more realistic if you sand in several directions.

Here are some close ups of the distressing.

 

 Add in some hanging hardware if you are going to hang your sign.

And we’re all done!! So much more fun than a little plate right?

 

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial!!

I’m entering the sign at The CSI Project and the DIY Club!

  

Coming up this week I have a super fast Anthro Necklace Knockoff – it’s so sweet and simple that you can make up several for gifts! I can’t wait for you to see it.

Also, if you haven’t had a chance to enter the Black Friday Giveaways – you still have time!
All giveaways will be open through Thursday December 2 and you can go here for a list of all 18 of them!

Comments