How to Make a New “Old” Sign

If you’ve been a reader for a while you know how much I enjoy making something new look old. 

My favourite victim? Painted signs.

I have an entire Pinterest board of sign inspiration which includes this lovely pair from a site called 1stdibs:

Living with a mechanic, these would fit right in at our house.

Here’s my version of the second sign (which I promise I have no intention of selling since it is very, very similar).

How to make a new “old” sign:

Paint board with blue acrylic paint.

Apply Contact paper stencil cut with Silhouette (Font = Bebas Neue) *everything blue was covered with Contact paper.

Paint over board and stencil with another coat of blue paint so that any colour that bleeds under the stencil is the base colour (totally worked!).

Spray paint top coat in Heirloom White. Heirloom White, you never fail me!

Peel off Contact paper stencil while still wet to reveal this:

Look at those crisp letters! This was my best stencilling job EVER!

But, I wanted the sign to look old not new so I did the same thing as what I did with my vintage-inspired grocery sign – sand, sand and then sand some more!

To make it look a little dirtier I inked some spots with Tim Holtz’ distress ink and then smudged it in/wiped it off.

Old-ish Canadian Tire tool box courtesy of Mr. Mechanic.

(I wanted to turn it into a fall planter filled with mums but that was vetoed)

 

Oil funnel courtesy of the shed at the cottage.

It belonged to Mr. Mechanic’s Grandpa.

 

 

Before I made this I had already chosen the perfect spot to hang it: the wall across the bottom of the basement stairs. By hanging it low on the wall, you can see it through the window in the back door and while standing on the landing inside. 

The basement beyond the sign may be a work in progress, but the stairs have never looked better!

What do you think of my latest new “old” sign?

 

P.S. Is anyone getting a higher than normal number of spam Blogger comments recently?  I don’t want to have to add Captcha to commenting but they’re driving me crazy!

 

P.P.S. Oh my goodness, 99 posts! Whew!

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