Homestead Sign

Do you think of your house as not just a building to live in, but more of a homestead?   For us, it's a place to live, rest, play, garden, build, worship, work, entertain, and pray.  A place to call our own.

A homestead.

So as I pondered what to put on my latest sign as I decorate for Black and White Fall, I decided that "Homestead" was the perfect word.

I have used stencils and graphite-transfer techniques to make signs in the past, but for this project, I used a glue-transfer technique (Becca was also the inspiration for this sign.  So pefect for my black and white theme.)



This technique definitely works, but you have to be thorough, gentle, and patient (three things that I'm prone to not be!).  You must follow the instructions to the letter (yep, not me again...).  But I did manage to get this to work, and here's how:

1.  Sand away the rough edges of your board, and wipe clean.

2.  Paint your board black and then white.  I used two coats of white, which allowed a little of the black to show through here and there and give the board an antiqued look.

(I do all my painting on my den floor.  With three pets swarming around me.  I'm a risk taker.

3.  Sand the areas of the board where you want the black paint to show through.   (Note: this is somewhat difficult/time-consuming to do by hand.  Alas, I have no electric sander, but it is definitely possible by hand.  You just have to keep at it.)

4.  Paint printer paper with Elmer's Washable Glue.  Make sure you cover the entire area where the image will be printed.  Let dry completely.  When the pages were dry, I stacked them between some heavy books to straighten them out a little and ensure they'd feed smoothly through the printer.

5.  Print out your image on the glue side of the paper.  You need a laser-jet image for this project.  Also, be sure to print a mirror image of your graphic if you are using words.  In Paint.net, you select image, and then flip horizontal/vertical.

6.  Position your graphics on your board to decide where they should be placed.    (The beautiful wheat pictures came from The Graphics Fairy.)

 (Check out the monster mistake I almost made....pretty sure "homstead" is not a word....)

7.  Paint Mod-Podge onto the areas where your graphics will go.  Place them ink and glue-side down, press the graphic onto the board, and smooth out all the bubbles.

 8.  Let the graphics dry to the board overnight.  Removing them too early will result in improper transfer of the ink.  Mine dried a little over eight hours.  I used a wet rag to moisten the graphics and rub the wet paper away, revealing the graphic transferred onto the wood.

9.  I then painted the whole piece with Mod Podge to disguise the areas around the graphics where it had been used to tranfer the image.

That's it!

More than just a home.