How to make a welcome sign?

[Heinton]

I want to make a welcome sign for my front porch. First I thought about using a stencil for the letters (name, house number) but it takes so long: paint the letter, remove stencil sheet, wait to dry, paint another letter, etc. There''s got to be a shorter way! I''m lousy at handwriting, I''ve tried to learn caligraphy but am all thumbs

I''ve looked for stencils that are individual letters, so I could spell out our name in one shot, but the only ones I can find are the standard stencil font - not very attractive!

I have the wooden plaque, and the colors I want to use, can anyone help me figure out how to do this?

[Craft Forums]

[sarabell]

how about this? find a font you like that you have on your computer (or search online for new fonts you can download), print out your name as large and as spaced as you would like it to appear on the plaque. then get some carbon or other transferring paper (or just scribble hard on the back of the page with pencil.) then tape it on the plaque and trace the outline of the right side of the paper. remove it and paint in the outline.

[Heinton]

Hmmm, that could work! Do they still make carbon paper? :)

[sarabell]

yeah. but i'm cheap and lazy and would probably just scribble on the back with pencil if i didn't have any.

[Colleen]

Hello
I recently made a welcome sign. I made my letters out of air dry clay which is very papery. I layed my stencil on a sheet of plastic and just pressed the clay into each letter and scraped the excess off with a ruler and allowed to dry. It only took a day and then I painted them and glued them onto the piece. Then the whole piece was varnished. It was something different and I loved the way it turned out.