First off, and most importantly: Happy Friday the 13^th!

A few years ago, mom, Kira and I got a ton of wood block decorations from a place in Utah called Wood Connections. Seriously, that store is addictive. The idea is, the masterminds behind this store come up with adorable décor items made out of wood. They paint them and add cute papers until the designs are absolutely irresistible.

The catch is, you buy the unfinished wood projects, and then you finish them however you want. It’s genius. You walk through the store and the cute samples make the unfinished projects practically leap off the shelves and into your basket. The problem is, you then get home and remember: oops, now I actually have to finish all these cute things. And I, my friends, am a master procrastinator. It wasn’t until about two years after purchasing my blocks that I actually painted them. (If we’re being completely honest, there is still at least one set of blocks from that initial trip, about 5 years ago, sitting unpainted in my craft room to this day.)

The majority of the blocks from that first trip were Halloween decorations and I love them! I have happily displayed them in home home each and every year. I wish I had got my butt in gear sooner and finished them when I first bought them. You’re probably wondering right about now why I just shared all of this with you. Here’s the reason: you would think that I had learned my lesson with making my own home décor considering how long that took me to complete. However, apparently I am a slow learner. Now that I live in a house with a mantle I decided I need a sign to sit up there for the Holidays. Enter Pinterest!

I saw this picture and thought this sign would be perfect. I clicked through, and as it turns out, pretty much everything from this party was purchased at Hobby Lobby. Well, that’s awesome. So, I click over to Hobby Lobby’s website just to see if they still have. Guess what, it’s a year old and they don’t. That’s fine. I’ll just need to make my own. Have you seen this saying before?

Yeah, I definitely lived up to it on this one. Only it was more like: why buy it when I can spend two weeks of my life making it instead.

To start, I sketched it out in my sketchbook, scanned it in to the computer, mocked it up in illustrator and finally, printed the design out and taped it together to get a full sized version of the sign on paper. Whew. That’s a lot of work, just to start making the sign.

Then, I bought a cheap, thin, mdf panel at Home Depot and cut it in half to use as the sign. A couple quick coats of black spray paint and I was ready to transfer the design to the board. This step would have been a lot easier if I had been able to find my transfer paper, but alas, the hard way it was. I used a pencil and scratched lead onto the back of the paper. This way, when you lay the design on the board with the ‘right side’ up and trace the outer edges of your design the graphite will transfer onto the board. Then, and only then, are you finally ready to start painting. It took about a week of painting here and there to get the sign looking how I liked it but I definitely think it was worth it. I seriously think it looks soooo cute sitting up there on my mantle. Oh, and that cute pumpkin and the trio of ghosts? Those are just a few of my wood block decorations that I mentioned earlier. See! I told you they were cute.

Have you ever wanted something off Pinterest this badly? No? Just me then? Ok. 🙂 Well, I hope your October is going great so far and that if the crafting bug bites you too that you love the end product of your efforts as much as I love mine.