All in a days work!

Here’s your sign!

This is one days worth of finished signs.

But don’t be TOO impressed!  I make my signs in ‘assembly line’ style.  So I sand, base-coat, paint and distress a bunch of boards all at once.  (usually when I’m in a ‘not so creative’ mood and just feel like doing ‘busy work’.  It’s very therapeutic!)  Then when I feel like cranking out the signs, all I have to do is letter them and varnish them.  THAT is the part that I got done in one day.

Will take another day for me to put hangers on them all and take pictures and measurements for etsy; and price the ones to take to the malls.

But STILL, it feels pretty good to have them all stacked up like that and when Michael asks me what I did, I can say, “here’s your sign!”  hehe

Mixing and matching stencils

I have a LOT of stencils.  And the more I buy, the more I (think) I need!  First I ordered a stock ‘LAUNDRY’ sign.  Made several signs.  Put them in my etsy shop and they sold quite well.  BUT THEN, someone inquired about a BIGGER one.  Then someone else asked if I could make one that says LAUNDRY ROOM?!?!?  And it just snowballs from there!

So I am trying to ‘order SMARTER’ when I have custom stencils made.  I ordered a big LAUNDRY ROOM sign and can make it with or withOUT the ‘room’ part on the end!  And on some of the smaller signs, I can make them a tad bigger by leaving more of a border around the words, like in the second from top LAUNDRY sign above.

And because I sand, basecoat, top coat and distress my sign boards well before I actually need to make signs, I often have boards to use that don’t perfectly fit the stencil.  Of course I CAN (and frequently DO!) just cut off the excess wood; sometimes I like to add some different design features.   Like the one above where I added little fleur de lis on either end to fill in the space.

When I DO cut off the excess ends of signs, I save all those pieces in a big box, then when it gets full I make little signs out of them!   Like these little crowns.  These are about 3-5″ x 3-5″.

And these little chandeliers on slightly bigger scraps.

And signs like these . .

  . .  and these . .

And these!   And sometimes I just stamp a big single letter on them,nad when I get a ‘box full’ will take them to one of my booths.

I’ve also been trying to think of new ways to sue some of the stencils I already have by mixing and matching parts of different stencils to create one sign.  Here’s my first ‘experiment’:

For these signs I used 2-3 different stencils and a foam stamp (on the biggest one).

My original small LAUNDRY sign, combined with “French” from a ‘French Market’ sign and small fleur de lis from my ‘Paris Flea Market’ sign.  Not bad for my first attempt.

I was just rummaging through what I had on hand in prepped and ready to letter sign boards that I might be able to use here.  Was thinking of trying to add a border design on this bigger one; but decided that I kinda liked the bare border.    Same as the first one, just on  a larger board.

And on this longer board, I use a bigger fleur de lis foam stamp.

So, which layout do you like best?  I need to pick ONE to produce for selling.  (and can offer the other styles by custom order.)

MORE new stencils!

Now that I’ve decided to down-size my etsy shop to just a few themes (instead of a little bit of EVERYthing!); and that one of my best sellers has always been signs . . . . I’ve been looking around for a few more stencils to add to my sign repertoire:

 I know some of these are hard to read.  I had to get the lighting ‘just so’ , and I wasn’t always SO successful; but you get the idea!

Quite a few ‘French themed’ stencils this time.

And some are just of a different font of a most popular word I already have.

The ‘Le Bain’ sign I already have has always been a good seller; so hoping this one will be also!

I especially like ‘mixed font’ signs like this; where I can also use just ONE of the words; or combine one word with a different stencil.

I’ve been hunting for the PERFECT bee stencil for ages!  This one WON!  Can use just the bee.  Have some little crown stencils that I could add above the bee too.    Great stencil for a little round stool top.

LOVE all the postcard and postmark stencils out there right now.  I already have ONE of a French Postmark; figure I can mix/match parts of it with parts of this one to create lots of variations!

I’ll be ‘buried in price tags’ for the next few days; getting LOTS of smalls ready to go to Curiosities nest week.  It is KILLING me to have that practically empty booth!!!  But I am really trying to work ‘smarter’ and pace things out so I don’t do further damage to my back.

It’s CRUNCH TIME!!

I just realized that the spring show is ONE WEEK away!!!  How does it always seem to creep up like that?!?!  We’ve had practically NO dry weather for the last month, so I’ve not gotten any of my big projects done.  Hopefully today and tomorrow will stay dry enough to do some power painting.  Forgive me if posts are few and far between for the next week.

I put up a new sign in my space at Stars yesterday.  I really LIKED the old one (which I made) better, BUT, it took up a lot of valuable ‘face’ space in the very front, which I feel is better used to show PRODUCT.  So, this is the new sign I designed and ordered from VistaPrint.  It’s corrugated plastic, so I can screw it to the TOP of the fence backing, leaving more room for product.

NOW I just have to decide what to do with this old sign!  It will be easy enough to cover up the existing wording with more torn book pages.  Will probably HAVE to leave it as a sign of some sort since it has holes drilled in it for the ribbon.  I’m thinking something Paris . . .

I didn’t do a lot of work on the space yesterday.  Mostly just wanted to pull the little bit of leftover Easter stuff, and tidy up.   Filled this front vignette with white frames and bird and next things.  (this is where the Easter stuff was)

Before going in I had thought I would do this in ‘beach’ decor, but so much of the beach stuff had sold that I didn’t have enough.  So, it’s birds by default.  Gotta work on more beach stuff for the next fluff.

A lot of the bird stuff had sold as well, I just had MORE of it to begin with.

All the black and turquoise frames had sold, I guess I’ll emphasize white then!

I wonder if that ‘home’ sign would fit on top of one of those bird nest assemblages I did?!?!?

Sweet little jute bee skep I made.  You can’t really see it in this photo, but there is a little gold bee charm tied to the grubby tag.

Lots of ‘finial’ type things; big and small.

Vintage baby boy blue goods.

Vintage apothecary bottles.

Little bird collage.

The LAST birdcage!  I started out with 7 or 8; down to this last one new.  Gotta get out and do some shabby shopping soon!

Simple framed egg collages.

Several different styles of double frame egg prints.  Not enough room to spread them out, so they’re just stacked for now.

Signs.  Been working on LOTS more for the show and to stock at Stars soon.

Assorted faux finials and architectural elements.  Need to bring these down off that shelf. but I don’t know WHAT to replace them with.  Can’t put anything too small up there or it will get lost.