Seasonal Welcome Sign

I created this sign right before the Fourth of July but I am only finally posting now due to laziness. I have been wanting to create this sign for a while, but I could never find wood cutouts exactly like I wanted. Plus they can get pretty expensive. 

I thought about cutting my own but that just seemed like a lot of work and pretty intimidating. That is when I got the idea of just using pre-cut wooden circles. I think it came out really cute!

This was one of my most fun projects to date. I really enjoyed the creativity of designing all the months myself. You could do this with friends and everyone's would be different, a reflection of their personality! Best of all, it is really inexpensive to make.

Supplies

• 6" x 36" x 1/2" wood board.  You can find this at the hardware stores for around $5
• 4" wood circles from Amazon.  I used half of them ($5 worth) 
• Velcro circles - I got a package from the Dollar Tree
• Paint (I assume you have this at home)
• Mod Podge (I assume you also have this already)
• Vinyl (optional)

Total Cost = $11

Directions

First you paint your board whatever color you want it to be. I stained mine since I wanted to then use vinyl to create a stencil for letters and then repaint it, allowing the stain to shine though.  However, you could do yours in a variety of ways. You could paint it and then paint the letters on it.  Or add permanent vinyl. It is only limited to your imagination. For the purposes of this blog, I will show you how I made mine. 

After staining it, I used my Cricut to cut out the letters and place them on the board. Since I am going to peel the vinyl off later, I always use a color that I probably won't use for anything else. No sense wasting the good stuff.  If you want to keep vinyl on yours, make sure you use the permeant type if you plan on putting this outside. If you are not using vinyl at all, this is where you would paint your letters by hand.

After I put the vinyl on, I put a thin layer of Mod Podge over them to seal the edges. This isn't required but I find it ensures your lines are crisp and clear.  Allow it to dry before painting the entire board with paint.

Allow the paint to dry almost all the way before peeling off the vinyl. I don't like to let the paint dry all the way since it sometimes peels the paint off.  After you remove the vinyl, allowing the stain underneath to show through, seal the board with another thin layer of Mod Podge.

Now the fun part! Designing and painting the "O" of your sign with the wood circles.  In order to get the look I wanted, I painted all the circles with the same color of paint as the sign.  This way, if you don't paint the entire circle with your picture, what isn't painted will blend in nicely.  I then thought about what I wanted for each month, googled or Pinterest some ideas, and quickly sketched my ideas on each circle.  

 

I then painted them using acrylic paint. Since I am not good at realistic painting, I decided to go "whimsical" with my designs.  That way if I messed up, I could add a few dots or swirls and cover it up. Here are the themes I decided on, but again, you are only limited to your imagination. 

 

Once everything is dry, stick one rough side of the Velcro on the board and the fuzzy ones on the center of each wood circle.

And that is it! Pick the theme you want.  Now that Independence Day is over, I have switched to the watermelon but August will be here soon!  I had so much fun painting, I might make even more choices later!