wooden joy sign

 As we get closer to Christmas I should be checking projects off of my list. Instead I keep adding projects to it because I'm so inspired by projects that I see on the blogs that I read. 

As I was walking through the isle of our dollar store the other day I was keeping an eye open for some materials that would make a good project. I came across this plain wooden sign, and I knew that it would make a great (& cheap!) Christmas craft.

What you need:

wooden sign (check the dollar store)

scissors

paint 

Mod Podge

paint brush

scrapbooking paper

 cardstock

 cricut/sillouette/exacto knife

 ribbon

1. This is what my sign looked like when I bought it. Not so exciting is it?

2. I painted the sign white, although, you really just need to paint the edges white. (Sorry, the photo's not great, I was trying very hard to get the project done during naptime!) I also painted the eyelets, which I wasn't going to do, but I may have been a little bit too generous with the paint, and I got a bit of paint on the eyelets, so I decided to go ahead and paint them. I'm glad I did now.

3. I cut a piece of scrapbooking paper to cover the sign. Once I made sure that it was the right size, I took the paper off, covered the wood with a coat of Mod Podge, and then placed the paper back on the sign. I smoothed out the paper, trying to get rid of all of the air bubbles. Then I applied another coat of Mod Podge on top of the paper.

4. I used my cricut cutter to cut out the word joy, but this could be just as easily done with an exacto knife. Once I had my letters placed where I wanted them, I lifted up each letter, one at a time, and slathered on some more Mod Podge, and then placed each letter back down. Once all of my letters were down, I painted the final coat of Mod Podge on to seal everything. (I'm sure you probably don't need to use this much, but I wanted to make sure that everything was stuck on there, and sealed very well!)

 The last thing that I did was replace the chain with a piece of ribbon. And there you have it- a new Christmas decoration for about $4.

Linking up with My Backyard Eden & Fingerprints on the Fridge.