Home of the Free

Happy Memorial Day! I whipped up this sign for practically pennies to use for my mantle.  This took me just two evenings to make but if you were really dedicated, you could make it in one, I'm pretty confident in you!

I started off by cutting some wood.  You could easily use scrap wood for this project; especially if you made a smaller sign (mine ended up being way larger than I anticipated).

I used two different sizes of lumber because when I went back to Lowe's to buy more wood, I couldn't remember what size I used I planned it very carefully to have a rustic feel.  I'm happy about how the mishap turned out.  On the back of the boards, my brother helped me nail in 3 additional wood perpendicular to the front strips to keep them all together.  One nail for each board.

I tested out how it would look with my freshly spray painted glass jars.  Yup! It's gonna be giant great!!

Found some extra white paint that we have used for the baseboards around the house and gave the sign a quick coat.  I wanted full coverage but wasn't too worried about how "pretty" I painted it.  Again, I was just kinda going for the rustic feel (for real this time).  Then, I found some extra grey paint that we had left over from painting the nursery and mixed that into the white paint.  I used a stencil that I found in the garage (project inspiration).  It's actually a star stencil that came with a pack of sidewalk chalk!

I opened up a word document on my computer and found a font I liked.  Then, I printed out giant letters.  (Home, Free, & Brave each had their own pages for each letter of the words).

I placed the letters where I wanted them then took a sharp tool from Bryan's tool box.  I believe it's called an awe?  But I simply traced the letters onto the board.  I pressed fairly hard but not hard enough to rip through the paper.  The results were perfect!  It left me with a nice indent in the wood that I was able to follow along with my paintbrush to make a nice crisp line.

I used a super skinny paint brush for the outlines then used a thick one to fill in the letters.  The letters always look a little messy and scary when you're first tracing them out with paint but once you round out all the lines a little, they really start to look crisp and clean.

And here's the finished project!  As you can see, I majorly scaled down the jars in front.  I was kinda sad about that, but I didn't want to be covering up the bottom of the sign as much as it would have.  As a result, I'm thrilled with how it came out!

The best part of this mantle is I'll be able to have it up for Memorial Day and keep it up until after the Fourth of July!

Thank you to all of the members of our Armed Services who were brave enough to give the ultimate sacrifice in order for us to have our freedom.

-Janice