Tutorial: How To Make A Welcome Home Sign

Welcome!  Today, I’m going to show you how I altered a wood plaque to make a Welcome Home sign, using the August Album Kit from My Creative Scrapbook.  This is the end project, shown with a little help from my 3-year-old.  

This is how the sign looked when I started:

I bought this wood plaque on clearance from Hobby Lobby after Christmas for 39 cents.  It wasn’t very pretty but I knew it would be easy to alter and was a real bargain at that price.

I considered spray painting the plaque, which would have been an easy fix for a new background, but I wanted to stitch on my squares for a homey look, so I used a cardstock base instead.  I traced the shape of the plaque onto black cardstock, cut it out, then punched eight squares from patterned paper. I used Echo Park Paper’s So Happy Together collection. It’s super cute and had a great sticker in the line that said “welcome home.”  Perfect!

Once I had my squares, I lightly tacked them onto the black background, then used a sewing machine to stitch around them.  Whenever I stitch on a project, I try to put the adhesive in a place where the needle won’t go to avoid ending with a really sticky needle.  In this case, I put the adhesive in the middle of the squares.

The kit included a large chipboard arrow.  It was a little too tall for my plaque, so I snipped off the bottom, covered it in patterned paper, stitched the edges and added a few embellishments.

Here’s a final look at the project.

This was really easy to make.  The plaque can either sit on a shelf or hang on the wall. I think I’m going to put it on my Expedit in my craft room to welcome me there.

Thanks for stopping by.  Don’t forget that PaperHaus magazine launches its inaugural issue on Sept. 1.  The contributors are part of a blog hop with awesome prizes along the way with several grand prizes on the PaperHaus blog. You have until midnight Friday to enter. You can find all the details here.