Cole's Crafts: Home of the Free because of the Brave Reclaimed wood sign

In the past two weeks since Jason has deployed I've become a craft addict. I'm taking the first step and admitting I have a problem. But since he won't be home for another 6-ish weeks I figured I may as well share my new found enjoyment. Hence we now have Cole's Crafts! I am Nichole, my instructions may not be entirely discernible or make any sense what-so-ever, but we're going have a go at it!

Over the last several weeks I've wanted to get my hands on some old wood. I didn't want to buy distressed wood, but I also wasn't having any luck finding it until yesterday. I was driving home from picking my 4-year old up from school when I noticed in front of a home being built just down the road, a whole fence had been torn down and put in the discard pile. There were also many more treasures just waiting to be disposed of. I naturally loaded my car up with all sorts of goodies including several 2x4's, pallets, fence posts, and random slabs of wood. It was a craft addicts dream come true.

Since my husband left, I have been working on making our craft/computer room into a patriotic shrine to display all of his plaques and awards from his service thus far in the Marine Corps. Cue craft project #1- Home of the Free - Because of the Brave reclaimed wood sign.

I began by choosing two nail free, sorta sturdy, fence posts. Each started out 6 feet in length but I didn't quite want my sign that long so I shorten them in true Tom-girl fashion by stepping on the board where I wanted it to break and pulling up hard on the end therefore snapping the board and giving me awesome splintered edgers. To make my sign 6 inches high I nailed two boards together. I just used small scraps of wood to act as stabilizers in the back.

Once everything was nailed together, I wiped the board off so it would have a cleaner surface then started to paint. I didn't want a solid color so I added water to my navy paint. I lightly brushed the color on so the gains of the old wood would show through.

While the paint was drying I cut out my "home of the free - because of the brave" vinyl using my cricut. Something I did not know at this point in time was vinyl hates old wood! It does not want to stick to it and if you try to make them hang out together it will frustrate you severely! So you ask, what is there to do? I choose to put a light coat of modge-podge over my entire board after I put the non-sticking sticky vinyl letters on. This worked wonderfully and really put the finishing touches on this project. There are probably better thing to do, but that's what I did and it worked so I'm not complaining!