Thursday, December 8, 2011

DIY LETTERING {without a fancy cutting machine or stencil} NOEL BLOCKS

I want a Silhouette machine. Or a Circuit would do. But I don't have one and I don't have funds for one right now. So I make do. I recently figured out  a new way to do lettering-which I used on my "Save the Date Blocks". No vinyl. No cutting out Freezer Paper stencils. Just printing off letters. This is super easy and anyone can do it.

DIY LETTERING:
1. PRINT OUT YOUR LETTERS ON THE COMPUTER.
I used a very large font size, about 300; and used an outline style letter, so that I did not waste all my computer ink. The blocks I made here, were about 5-6 inches high.
2.TAPE THE LETTER TO YOUR BLOCK. Paint the block and let it dry before putting your letters on the blocks.
3. TRACE YOUR LETTER WITH A BALL POINT PEN- PRESSING HARD.

Now your block should have a light outline of your letter on the wood block.
4. REMOVE THE PAPER.
5. PAINT IN THE LETTER. I used my old tole- painting brushes- some had flat bristles and others were very small and fine. You could probably use your child's watercolor brushes if you did not have anything else.
To paint these blocks, I used acrylic craft paints.


 When you are done painting your letters, they will look something like this:
Not perfect, so an easy solution to make them look better, is to distress them a bit with some sandpaper. After that, they look like this:

And that is it. No special letter cutting machine, no stencils, just a font from your computer.
The possibilities are endless- but I'm sure if I did something more complicated, I would prefer a stencil or vinyl. But for now, this works great!
Happy Holidays!
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2 comments:

madebymaggiemae said...

Awesome idea! I covet one of those fancy schmancy machines too, but a police officer's salary does not include them. Thanks

Jenn said...

I love this even better than vinyl letters or stencils. I'm totally going to make some too. Thanks for sucha great idea.