Fresh Cut Christmas Trees Sign Craft Night

Host a craft night making a darling Fresh Cut Christmas Tree sign!

Ladies! Who doesn’t love a sign making craft night?! A couple of weeks ago I got a few friends together for a Christmas craft night. Our craft was a 2-part craft. The first night we assembled our signs and painted them. The second day we stenciled the wording to finish the signs.

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I found the idea for this craft from Allison at TheGoldenSycamore and she has a great tutorial for how she came up with the sign. We did things a bit differently and I will share our version below.

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You will need:
Wall paint
Green Paint (wall or craft paint)
Red Paint (wall or craft paint)
Silhouette machine
Blow-dryer
Vinyl
Stencil brushes
Wood for sign

Step 1: Sign Assembly
I have a LOT of scrap wood left over from my projects, and so we used some of it to make our signs. Because of this, our wood all varied slightly in size and number of slats.

We arranged our slats with a couple furring strips glued to the back with wood glue. Our glue took about 15 minutes until it was dry enough to flip the sign over to paint. You could also use nails if your wood is thick enough.

Host a craft night making these darling Fresh Cut Christmas Tree signs!

Hobby Lobby has some slatted wood that you could use instead of building a sign. Their sign size is smaller than we had, but they are quite cute. I’ve also seen similar plain wooden signs at Walmart (in the craft section) and Michaels.

Step 2: Paint Background Color
We used wall paint instead of craft paint. My experience is that craft paint sometimes peels up with the stencil (for the wording), but wall paint is much more durable.

Another tip: use satin or semi-gloss (or even gloss if you prefer) paint as your stencil will stick to the glossed paints better. Flat and eggshell paints still work, but the vinyl will not adhere as well and you run the risk of stencil paint bleed.

Let your paint dry completely. See the paint can for drying times. We waited until the next day to apply the stencil. If your paint is not completely dry, your stencil could pull up the background paint.

Host a craft night making these darling Fresh Cut Christmas Tree signs!

Step 3: Apply Stencil
I pre-cut the vinyl with my Silhouette so that it was already ready for each person. As you apply your vinyl, press along the edges to get a nice seal. This prevents your top coat paints from bleeding beneath the vinyl. We also used a blow-dryer to heat the vinyl for the best adherence. We didn’t have any paint bleed when we used the blow dryer.

Host a craft night making these darling Fresh Cut Christmas Tree signs!

Apply the top coat paint using a stencil sponge. We used this kind. I have found that a couple light coats of paint works better than one thick coat of paint. The light coats prevent bleed.

Host a craft night making these darling Fresh Cut Christmas Tree signs!

Pull off the stencil as soon as you have finished painting. You don’t want the top coat of paint to completely dry because the dry paint may peel up as you remove the stencil.

After removing the stencil, allow the paint to completely dry. Attach wall mounts and you are ready to hang!

If you would like the Silhouette file that I used, click on the file below. I only ask that you use this for personal use. Please don’t use this link to make signs to sell.

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Host a craft night making these darling Fresh Cut Christmas Tree signs!

Host a craft night making these darling Fresh Cut Christmas Tree signs!

Host a craft night making these darling Fresh Cut Christmas Tree signs!

Enjoy! And merry crafting!! 🙂

 

 

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