Personalised plaque / sign new baby

Thought I would share a commissioned personalised door sign and plaque that I made. This was for a friend to send to America for her brother who just had a little baby girl.

I used one of my bulk-bought plaques from ebay without holes drilled. Since I bought my dremel 3000 I wont buy them with the holes pre-drilled as sometimes I make something and decide that I prefer it not to have twine poking through at the front. With baby gifts, for example, I find that it a more eloquent finish can be achieved by attaching ribbon to the back of the sign using double sided tape.

I wanted to create a border on this sign as I wanted it to be quite plain, but eye catching nonetheless. I spray painted the entire plaque in white and left it dry. I then used making tape to section off the border. I was worried that the masking tape would pull up the paint when I took it off so I only placed the masking tape down loosely. When I pulled it up I realised the paint had seeped under the masking tape. Initially I was mortified but after leaving it to dry and them going back to it I decided I actually really liked it. It kind of gave it a a torn paper feel. Anyway, I spray painted my letters and hearts, measured out where I wanted them placed and then glued them down with super glue. To attach the ribbon to hang the sign I placed some double sided tape at either end of the plaque vertically (from top to bottom) and stuck the ribbon in place.

For the details plaque I used my Kobra spray paints again, and wooden bear shape bought off ebay and a heart embellishment bought from Debs cards & crafts (unfortunately now closed down).

Decorating wooden plaques using Decal Paper

So, I've said in a previous blog that my writing on wooden plaques isn't brilliant and that I would be trying different methods to be able to offer a more professional finish.

Cue the decal paper method...

I love my quotes, but I want to be able to present them in an eye catching style. Decal paper is bascially an image transfer paper. It works a little bit like those tattoos you used as a kid. It is perfect for decorating wooden plaques, especially as I would be able to include a picture.... I just needed to master its use...........!

I searched my quotes board on Pinterest and decided to use a quote by Marilyn Monroe. I then search for a black and white image of her on google images. I decided to use my 100mm x 100mm square plaque so using Microsoft publisher I drew a box 100mm x100mm (this was simply to use as a guide for positioning my image and text - I deleted it before printing as I didn't want it to appear on my printed image). I positioned my image, wrote my text, altered the font and size and faffed and fiddled with the layout. When I was happy with how it looked I copied the entire image and pasted it into Paint where I flipped the image so It was back to front (otherwise when the image was transferred the writing would be the wrong way round). Then I printed it according the instructions that came with the decal paper (different brands of decal paper work differently so I won't attempt to give instructions on this). I am reliably informed that I could have just changed my printer settings to print  "mirrored", but my IT skills are a little basic and this was the easiest way for me to do it.

I painted my plaque with my Kobra spray paint in a very pale pink and set about transferring the image. Really I should have photographed the process to explain exactly how the decal transfer worked, but a) I didn't know I'd get it to work, and b) I would rather say I use "x" brand of decal paper and this is how it works.

Incidententally I used dry rub decal paper here. There is also waterslife decal paper which involves wetting the transfer image. I tried the water slide decal paper first (as its cheaper) and failed miserably. It seems like the easier option as you simply print, spray with an acrylic varnish a couple of times, wet, then apply the image. However, when I tried I mustn't have sprayed the image with enough varnish as the ink ran when I placed it in water and it was unusable. It might be worth trying laserjet printed images rather than inkjet-something else to try!

Dry rub decal paper involved a series and sticking and peeling films and rubbing out air bubbles. I found a few bubbles in the final product-but I'm sure ill get better at it and figure out how to avoid the bubbles. I was disappointed in this method as I'd hoped for a flawless transfer, whereby it looked like the image/text had been painted directly on to the wooden plaque, but when you look closely it looks a giant sticker. The other image I have ready to try doesn't go right the edge so it may be that I just need to be more clever about the design.

Anyway, here is the final product. I plan to put my dremel to good use and drill holes to make this a hanging plaque...

Decorating wooden plaques

I've been decorating wooden plaques for nearly two years now. Initially I just used tubes of acrylic paint and decorated them by hand with uni posca paint markers and embellishments. However, I hated seeing the paintbrush streaks and my handwriting was never quite neat/"arty" enough for my liking. 

Irritating paintbrush streaks

Poor handwriting

I've tried a gizzilion different sorts of pens and finally decided that for a professional look I am best using wooden letters. The prices of these vary but the cheapest I've found them so far is about 20p for a 4cm letter. Alternatively you can buy pots of 250+ self adhesive letters from amazon in arial font. One of these pots do go quite a long way, but it may be more economical to just buy the single letters to spell the words that you want rather than having a mountain of qs and xs that you'll never use.

Plaque made

I discovered a great secret to avoiding paintbrush streaks too... using spray acrylic paint instead. They give great coverage, they dry really quickly and I find that they're actually much more economical as I'm not applying 3-4 coats. My favourite is Kobra, which I buy from Graff City. Fab range of colours and if you buy in bulk (6+ cans) they're a great price compared to tubes of paint.

The wooden plaques themselves I buy from ebay. Depending on how many you want and the size you want to work with I recommend contacting a few different sellers to see what they can offer you in terms of discounts and combined postage. 

I'm always trying new techniques and will gradually blog the different methods I use with mini tutorials and information on which materials I use and where I have found them from. In the mean time, here's a few pics from my earliest attempts at plaque making:

I learnt whilst making this plaque that you should lightly sand
acrylic paint where you intend to glue and embellishment
otherwise it wont stick as well. Love the sign, hate the writing.

I wish I had done the writing in white for this one. Love the
pink colour. Think the writing looks a little lost - a smaller
plaque probably would've been better. I like the handwriting
for 'smile' but then it went all horrible! :o)

I actually really like this one for some reason.
It is very basic in terms of skills, but there is something about
it that catches my eye.

My first ever craft fair