Makeover Monday: 'Life Is Beauty Full' Sign

One of my favorite things to do is giving new life to furniture and decor for my home. What great satisfaction I get from making something from ugly and plain to something fun!

Each Monday this Month, I'll feature a makeover I whipped up. I try my very best to use what I have at home when it comes to the makeover. There is always leftover paint, wood and trim from past projects that I have stored away for projects like these.

I'm excited to show you what I did over the weekend. I created this fun sign with one of my favorite sayings.

"LIFE IS BEAUTY FULL"

It was so simple to make!

All you need is:

Piece of wood

MinWax Dark Walnut Stain

Craft Paint

Painters Tape

Stencil Brush

Stencils

Tape Measure

Pencil

Let's go over the steps!

I had this old sign that I didn't care for anymore. So I flipped it over and removed the sawtooth hanger off the back.

The wood was already nice and smooth, so it needed no prep work.

I wanted to create the look of planks on the one piece of wood. 

Now you can easily create a wood plank sign instead. Just head over to my easy tutorial on making a wood plank picture holder.

To create the look of planks, I decided to paint horizontal lines using painter's tape. I love painter's tape, I use it for everything!

So I measured 4 equal parts, for each word of my quote. I wanted each word to be the focus of each "plank".

My planks happened to be 5 1/4'' wide each but it all depends on the size of your board. So this measurement will vary to your taste and size of your piece of wood.

Then I placed a piece of tape at each marking. I don't like to mess with pencil marks so very small marks are only necessary.

Then I placed another piece of tape next to the existing pieces. I did no measuring on this step. I just allowed a small gap between the 2 pieces of tape.

Then I painted in between the 2 pieces of tape with dark brown craft paint.

I pulled off the painter's tape and now I have 3 lines with 4 sections for each word of my quote.

Now this is where you can do a couple options. You can either use paint or vinyl for your sign. You can create wonderful designs and words from your personal cricut or silhouette.

I don't have either so I used craft paint to first free hand a design inspired by a pattern I found on the Internet. It's not perfect. But that's okay because I'll be sanding and staining the piece later to hide the imperfections. But I like imperfections. :) I used a color called "seamist". I only painted this design on one section of my sign.

I already had some alphabet stencils. So I went ahead and stenciled each word with black craft paint to each section.

I used the painter's tape to keep my letters straight. I don't like to measure and mess with pencil marks.

After the paint was dry, I sanded down the wood to give the letters and design a little distressed look. Then I added MinWax Dark Walnut Stain.

The stain really made the "seamist" color pop. The design is subtle enough to add that extra detail without overpowering the the message of the quote.

Now I have a fun and inspiring sign to add to my living room that I created for FREE!

Thanks for stopping by. Be sure to come back tomorrow to link up to Terrific Under Ten Tuesday! A fun linky party for projects and fun finds for $10 or less!

Linking up HERE.