How to Make a Pottery Barn Inspired PEACE Sign

How to Make a Pottery Barn Inspired PEACE Sign

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Christmas, crafts, decorating, Holidays, inspiration, paint, seasons, spray paint, stain, tutorial

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I am so excited about this project!  I love me some Pottery Barn, especially at Christmas. I love how they don't overdo things. I find their holiday decor subtle as compared to some others. I especially love their holiday PEACE sign!  It is bold and graphic, which isn't usually my Christmas decorating style, and I appreciate that it can stay up all season or forever. Don't we always want peace?  What I didn't want was to pay $129 plus shipping, especially when making my own, using theirs as inspiration, would be easy.

Here's theirs for reference, by the way.

Photo source: Pottery Barn

Not exactly the same but I'm ok with that. It has the same general vibe as PB's and that's cool with me.  Here's how I did it.

1. I purchased a piece of flat pine shelving at Lowes. It was 8 feet long. Try to choose one that isn't riddled with knots or else you'll have to prime, blah blah blah. I chose not to cut it right away and I'll tell you why in a few.

2. I then spray painted it white with just a regular, flat, latex spray paint. I will say that I would have used Heirloom White if I had been able to find it. Instead I just bought white.

3. I printed each letter from my regular old printer. I used Arial font and increased the size to 700.  I think I needed to go bigger.

4. To transfer the letters to the wood, I covered the back with sidewalk chalk in a color I would be able to see clearly against the white. Then I positioned the paper on the board and traced each letter with a pen.  This creates a chalk outline on the board!

 5. Using a bright red paint pen (Painters brand from Walmart) I traced each letter. Once the outline was dry, I used the same marker to fill in each letter. One pen was enough to do the whole sign with touch ups too. 
I wanted to make sure all the letters fit on the board so I cut it after all the letters were painted. We just used a hand saw but you can use a table saw or whatever.

6. After the whole thing is dry, I used my orbital sander to distress the edges and a sanding block to do the middle in different areas. I distressed mine far less than PB's but I am not a huge fan of distressing. You can make your sign in as much distress as you wish.

7. In order to make it look aged like Pottery Barn's, I diluted a very dark stain with water and brushed it over the entire thing, wiping it off immediately.

8. I didn't apply any wax or varnish. It is not going outside but if yours is then you'd want to do something like what I did here to make it more water resistant.  Jim brought up a good point and thought I shouldn't put a top coat on in the event next year there is something else I want to paint onto the board. Good thinkin, Lincoln!

Like I said, I know it isn't exact. But I can fix that by beefing up the letters a little and maybe going over them with a darker red. or not. It looks pretty next to our fireplace so we'll see if I ever do perfect it!

What is inspiring you this Christmas season? 

Cheers!

Jenny