Wooden Sign Class

Last week Kelli and I signed up to go to a wooden sign class.  It was a last minute, what the heck-why not, kind of happening.  I saw on Facebook that two friends of mine were “interested in an event near me”.  I clicked on it to see what the “event” was.  Well is was a traveling class coming to Decorah to make wooden signs.  The class was going to be the next day and it said we were suppose to register the day before.  UGH.  We were too late.  I told Kelli about it anyway.  She said she wanted to go though.  We ended up calling and asking if we could squeeze into the class.  They said yes so that left us quickly scrambling to figure out what sign we wanted to make.

To make a sign, we needed to pick a few things:
saying
wood stain
amount of distress on the boards

I’m terrible at decision making so I’m super glad that we had to rush.  I went with my first instinct every time.

I picked a personalized “Bless our Home” in a dark walnut stain with a little bit of distress.  The next day after I was done with childcare I headed out and met Kelli at class.

As we sat down for class they handed out our boards and the stencil.  Our first job was to remove the white from the stencil.  Kelli is doing that here.

Mine is shown with the white paper off mine.

Next, we positioned the saying on the board.  There isn’t a big margin so it was actually easy.  It’s sticky so it hold in place.

Here is Kelli taking a credit card and smoothing the bubbles out of the sticky stencil.

Next up, time to paint.  It’s important that to just dab and not do strokes when painting.  That way paint doesn’t seep under the stencil.

Before the paint is dry it’s time to lift the sticky blue stencil from the board.  I had done that.  Now I am using an exacto knife to lift the small spots. like space in the center of an “e”.

Kelli had a very detailed sign that needed lots of exacto knife work.  It was a little scary seeing our signs looking like this. We so hoped that they would be wonderful and initially we were uncertain.

In the end, out signs turned out like this….

Mine:  “Bless our Home” with Kramer 1986 in the heart of the O of home
Kelli’s:  The secret to having it all is believing you already do.

I class was held at Pulpit Rock Brewery in Decorah.  The teachers were traveling teachers from Galena, IL.   This is their website.  They said that they do both public and private parties.  If you host a private party and 15 people attend, you get your sign for free.  I looked on their site and they host parties in Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin.  They also let you do signs in their shop in Galena.  The instructor also said that they do custom signs for people.  The cost of the class isn’t cheap….my sign was $65 with everything included.  Kelli and I didn’t really care though.  The time together creating was well worth it.  If you get a chance while visiting Galena or a traveling class, check them out.