DIY: Thank you, LOVE, and signs

I wanted signs in our wedding shots after seeing other couples holding adorable homemade signs.  That and I thought they would be a great picture for thank you cards.

I made the following signs: Thank you (we could print these for the front of thank you cards), LOVE (because who doesn’t love LOVE?), and the simple but classic symbol.
This is the current decor for the top of our low bookshelf.  I love reusing items from my projects!  

A few tips I learned along the way:
1. Use cardstock.  I rushed and printed signs for our photobooth on plain paper and they were pretty floppy in photos.
2. Bold and increase your font whenever possible.  It looks large on the screen, but won’t look large in your hand.
3. Don’t  be confined to a single sheet.  You can always have your design overlap pages and cut it out later.
4. Printing on cardstock would be ideal, but if you want to cut out individual words or letters, read below.
5. Play around with fonts and see what works well (if you’re cutting out the words like me, scripts are definitely harder!)  There are tons of free fonts at sites like dafont and 1001Freefonts

Start with this…

Here were my materials:

• Heavy (gold or whatever other color) cardstock
• Exacto knife
• Printed sign
• Newspaper (to act as a pad underneath your cardstock)
• Glue Stick
• Scissors

Follow these steps:
1. Design words in MS Word or Powerpoint.  Remember to print it out to get an actual feel for size and dimensions.  FYI, the “LOVE” letters are Calson Initials font, font size 300.  The “Thanks” is Coventry Garden font, font size 250.
2. Cut a wide outline of words/shape with scissors.

3. Paste words/shape onto back of cardstock.  Line the bottom of cardstock with newspaper to protect your cutting surface.
4. Perforate the entire outline of the words/shape with the Exacto knife.  This helps make the cutting easier later and guides the shape.

5. Cut out the words/shape with the Exacto knife.

6. Have fun with your signs!

It would have been a lot easier if the words were printed directly on the signs, but I still loved them.  That and I guess I didn’t mind an afternoon of cutting.  But I am happy that these signs are durable (I plan on getting them framed or at least save them in my scrapbook.

Have you taken part in any time consuming projects that you still loved?

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