My youngest son is in the Marine Corps. He left for boot camp in May and due to Covid we haven't been able to see him since. We're happy to say he will be coming home for the first time in almost 8 months for Christmas! To say we are excited is an understatement. When I saw the design we used for our sign, I knew exactly what I wanted to do!
I started out by painting a 12 x 17 inch board with Folk Art Chalk Paint in Adirondack. Chalk paint goes on so rich that your board does not need to be perfect. As you can see, we had a huge flaw in our wood but you won't even see it in the final piece. While the chalk paint was drying, I cut the design.
We used the design There's No Place Like Home For the Holidays from Design Bundles. We are a Plus Member, therefore, the design is free to us. As an alternative, you could use this design. It is similar in concept and is an outright purchase. If you do any level of crafting such as screen printing, vinyl, scrapbooking or even laser cutting one of the Plus Membership is a good idea. They have an excellent mix of designers and all design licenses are dual covering both personal and commercial use. They also have a healthy section of freebies and tutorials. That's a win for makers! Before cutting, I did remove the tree and adjust my wording in order to fit the wooden houses we will be adding.
When I work with vinyl, I only use Oracal 651. It is high quality, weeds easier than most and stays put. It also doesn't hurt that it is more affordable than most vinyl, too! We used the following settings on our Silhouette Cameo 4:
After weeding our vinyl, we applied our transfer sheet. Once the transfer sheet has been started, I like to lay my quilting ruler across the top of the transfer sheet and then gently slide it down while I pull the backing off at the same time. This helps to minimize the air bubbles and provides a quality application when working on larger projects. With the transfer paper applied, we flipped our design over and removed our cutting mat and then the vinyl backing.
With our design centered, we rubbed it permanently into place and then removed our transfer paper. We also applied a quick swipe of Tim Holtz Distress Oxide in Black Soot on all of our wood edges to add dimension. After the Distress Oxide dried, we applied a thin coat of wax to the entire sign.
