Made by Emily Joyce

A sign I made in my pre-cricut days! I got DIY ing because of cheapness and that cheapness made me adamant that I did NOT need to buy a cricut (but then one was gifted to me and I wasn’t gonna say ~no~ lol). Anyway, the point of this tutorial is that you don’t need a Cricut to make cute signs for your house. (Just a little more patience!)

I got the wood for this piece at Michael’s (link here). Make sure you check for coupons before you check out- I don’t think I’ve ever went to Michael’s and ~not~ used a coupon. I usually just google coupons while I’m in line and pull it up on my phone for them to scan.

1.) Paint your surface white. I wanted mine to look a little rustic so I did a thin coat starting from the middle and stretching the paint out to the edges so the edges look less covered. Alternatively you could sand the edges down a little if you don’t like how your paint looks.

2.) Trace a circle. I used a bowl and just eyeballed where the center was. Then paint! I mixed this color myself from paints I had on hand- just a hint, if you’re mixing, do more than you expect to use! I had to start over once because I ran out and couldn’t get exactly the same shade when mixing the second time.

3.) Now for the words. I found a font I liked (there’s tonsssss of free fonts on pinterest) and printed it off. Then, using graphite paper, trace the words over onto your wood. You could do the same for the paw prints too if you found a paw print you liked. I went rogue and free handed them (and regretted it, because I for some reason made them WAY too small 😂).

4.) Now the tough part: painting the font. I used the smallest paint brush I could find (actually a makeup brush LOL) and got started. My only tip here is to go s-l-o-w-l-y and use as little paint as possible. It’s going to take a long time, but that’s less work than making a mistake and having to start over.

One of my favorite hand drawn pieces that I’ve woodburned! Here’s a step-by-step!

1.) Decide what you want to draw, and find reference pictures! I wish I still had my reference pictures saved but I think I used like five of them to draw this.

2.) Draw on PAPER first! I know some people draw right on wood- I erase wayyyy too much and find it tends to leave eraser marks. No bueno. I like to trace the outline of the piece of wood onto the paper so I know exactlyyyy how big to draw my design.

3.) Transfer your paper to wood with graphite paper. (I got mine here). Graphite paper is black looking paper with graphite on one side (like from a pencil). When you place is under your design (shiny side down) and then trace on top of your design, it will transfer the design to your wood. I know some people think graphite paper is too messy because it might leave some stray marks and be hard to remove, but it’s what I use.

6.) Choose your tip. I tend to use the looped tip the most- it’s very versatile but can still do fine details as well. Make sure your woodburning tool is OFF while changing tips, and to be on the safe side, I tend to unplug mine as well.

5.) Time to burn! Turn your woodburning tool on, and do a test patch on a similar piece of wood. The graphite will burn faster than the wood, so I prefer to test with graphite on my test wood. When you picked a good temperature, you can start on your design!

6.) Trace your design with the woodburning tool using minimal pressure- the heat should be doing the work, not you! Move relatively quickly to avoid the burn spreading off your line, and be aware that different knots of wood might burn faster, causing splotches.

7.) Neaten it up! I go back over my lines a few times to clean them up before adding any shading. You can also use a razor blade to kind of scrape away any splotches in your line. Just be sure to scrape as little as possible so you don’t remove a chunk of your wood!

8.) If you’re doing any shading, make sure your tool is off and cooled all the way before changing tips. After changing to a shading tip, redo the testing process before burning on your actual piece. With shading, it’s even more important to move your tip quickly so you get an even shade.