Old Glory

Well, I did it again.   I fully intended to make this an ice cream sign and then I visited my blogg'n buddy Bliss's blog over the weekend and I came away with two wonderful inspirational ideas.  Since it's the best time of year (we should all celebrate all year) to celebrate our American heritage, the patriotic theme won.

 As soon as I read Bliss's post, I just knew I had to paint this saying on my sign.  In fact, it may become one of my favorite sayings!  (I just realized I changed one of the words, but the meaning is the same.)  BTW, my husband is a veteran and we are all so proud he served this great nation when they needed him.

I don't know about you, but I get all emotional when I read these words.

 So here is what I did to create this Americana sign.  I found this board at the salvage yard.  I'm not sure what it was for, but it feels like a butcher block.  It is extremely heavy.  One side had teddy bears on it, and I knew I didn't want to use those, but the back side was perfect because of it's shape.

I painted it with plain old exterior house paint that I had left in a can from another project.  I sell all of my signs at the shop so I paint with exterior paint in case my buyer wants to put the signs outside.  This could even be used on the back of a bench.  Then I took my right angle ruler and used it to get my lines straight.  I used painter's tape on every other row.  The stripes I used the tape on remained my white stripes and in between I painted with cardinal red acrylic paint.  Not totally sure what color the blue was, but if memory serves me, it was something like liberty blue.  The yellow is butter yellow.  All three were acrylic paints.  I used a dinner plate and traced it to make the circle for the blue and then used an inexpensive star stencil I picked up at the craft store.  It has all different sizes of stars on it.

 Both of the stencils I used are three-inch stencils I purchased on EBay from Stencils by Joanie aka PBJ Stencils.  They were a little pricey, but I have totally gotten my money's worth out of them since I paint signs frequently.  I am pretty sure she calls the handwriting stencil "French Script."  Notice how I used my liner brush to fill in the stencil gaps.  This makes it look more hand done.  I also do a rough sketch on paper so I know how to space my letters on my piece.  I use it as a guide.  When I was done lettering, I sanded  back the whole project.  I wiped it down with some dark stain diluted with mineral spirits.  When that was dry, I sprayed it with a clear coat spray that is suitable for outdoors. This sealed in all the colors and the stain.  The following pics are the way the board looked when I brought it home. 

Like those teddy bears? 

 So getting back to Bliss's post, she also in the same post gave a recipe for this incredible sandwich.  We liked it so much we ate it for lunch and then for dinner again!  Not exactly low calorie, but after all, it was a holiday.  Here is the link to Bliss's post click here .   Thanks so much, Bliss, for sharing this with us.  She photographed her "sammy" so I had to follow suit of course.  Thanks for stopping by.  Hope to see you again soon.

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