First Tutorial: Beach Art

OKAY...time for my first tutorial...wish me luck! This is really basic, thought we'd start easy. I am going to show you how I made a beach sign for my kids' bathroom using vinyl lettering as a stencil. 
First, I prepared my wood. You can choose from almost any medium for this project wood, fabric, metal. I used some more of that old wood crate you have heard me mention before. I sanded it down, nothing too intense and then whitewashed it with basic white house paint (handy to have a bucket of this around, I use it all the time for projects).

Next, I applied the vinyl. When I created the vinyl I made it to be used as a stencil, which means I took the letters out and left the negative image. Vinyl lettering comes with a paper backing that needs to be peeled off. There is masking (looks like a huge piece of masking tape) on the front that will keep everything together as you pull off the paper backing:

Then, I flipped the vinyl piece over and stuck it to the board. I rubbed it down onto the board with my fingers so it would stick and started pulling the masking off. You can see my whitewashed board through the letters.

Next, comes the spray paint (love spray paint!). I used this guy:

And it looked like this when I was done. I did not want deep coverage, I wanted the wood grain to show through. Yes, my husband LOVES what I have done to the garage floor!

Once dry, I removed the vinyl all in one piece still. And voila! 

I let my daughter pick the saying, since she loves the warm beach (as opposed to any beaches we live near which are very cold), I am doing the bathroom in a beach theme to help her feel more at 'home'. This sign is 12 inches tall and 35 inches wide. The vinyl to do a project this size on your own would be $22. It can be customized to say anything you want, or it can also be a graphic. Shoot me an email at amber@pineplace.com if you would like to go for it!
 I am not ready to show the sign in context yet as I am still working on the bathroom, which presently looks about like this:

 Nice and BLAH!!!!!!

Bathroom redo reveal coming soon!