Wedding season is upon us and you’re planning a rustic bash. Scrolling thru Etsy and you’re loving those awesome welcome wedding signs, but your jaw drops at how much they turn out to be. Or perhaps money is not the issue and you’re down to the wire, and can’t really wait 3 to 6 six weeks for delivery. If you have a somewhat steady hand and a bit of patience you can totally have this done within a few hours if not less. Lets start the DIY rustic wedding welcome sign
The Wood Base for the DIY Wedding Welcome Sign
Obviously you’re going to need a base for your sign. For this tutorial the sign will be 36” x 22”.
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You will need:
2-1x6x6
1-1x2x6
1 1/4” brad nails or nails
Nail gun or hammer
- Cut the 1×6 to 36 inches and the 1×2 to 22”.
- Gather all your 1x6s and lay the pieces down to shape the sign with the front face facing down.
- Glue the edges together and then quickly glue the 1×2 to the back. Evenly space the 2 1x2s out. Nail them down.
- Wipe glue away with a wet rag. Let dry.
- Sand and stain. let dry.
Wahlah your sign base is ready.
How to Paint on Letters Without a Stencil
For this tutorial I have a free template to use, just click here to get your free welcome sign printable template, or you can create your own with fonts you already have or some free and/ or paid font downloads. Either way its super easy to do, and from this you can do so much more than just a wedding sign. The possibilities are endless.
*The template I am giving you is for a 36”x24” welcome sign. The welcome is not editable, just the name portion.
So Let’s start of with the wording already printed and ready to go.
Cut out all your words and glue together the word that were printed separately. I like to use the glue stick. Its thinner and easier to write over as opposed to tapping it together which adds another layer. There are two options to transfer the font to your base. You can just use carbon paper and place your wording over the carbon paper with the carbon facing down on your piece and trace away. Or you can turn the words over and start shedding with a pencil like the image below. Important note: place over a clean paper or card board. Trust me this is crucial to your counter tops. I was lucky to have the wording print right on the counter top from shading. Fun times trying to clean it off.
Once you have shaded all the wording place them onto your sign base. Use a roller and/or leveler to make sure that they words are centered and aligned. tape on to the base to keep in place.
Now that you have the wording placed and tape down, grab a sharpened pencil or a pen and start tracing the wording. In my onion using the pen was better. It glided easily and I didn’t have to resharpen it. Not sponsored by sears…..lol.
This is my favorite part. There is just something so satisfying about peeling and revealing. Gently peal of the wording to see how your tracing work came out.
Painting Pens for Sign Making
Okay so for the nitty gritty part. My current favorites to use are painters pens for my sign making. I use fine tip for detail and a bold tip to go over thicker fonts for a more opaque look. I did use the sharpie extra fine and it worked for the first sign, but then I didn’t use it for a while and the tip dried out, never worked again. Quick tip, when storing the pens in a cup or jar with the point facing down. 
These are no-gos for me. Save your money.
Me like a lot, but there are so many types of painting pens for your convince below are some affordable and highly rated to checkout.
Yup more tracing, but it’s kinda soothing to be honest.
Here is the completed piece version 1.
Here are some other pieces done with the same technique. If you like the “Love is sweet” Sign make sure you sign up for the Rough Edger Newsletter to gain access to the resource library. There you will find sign templates, wall art printables, design + home improvement cheat sheets, and more. Cricut you say. Bahh you don’t need a Circut to make some awesome signs.
If you do decide to make the “Love is Sweet” sign, the template in the resource library is the one I use, it doesn’t have the heart accents. For those I hand drew them myself to match what the client wanted.
Revision. Yes it’s a different date. My dumb butt put 16 on the first date when it was the 13th. I also thickened the welcome portion and enlarged the name and date with a different font that the couple choose.
And there you have it a DIY rustic wedding welcome sign. Like I said before this a super easy and affordable way to make a wedding sign or any sign. You can also add on boarders to give the pieces a finished look. Oh and make sure you add a coat of varnish for protection. Don’t want all that hard work flack off. Make sure you pin to your favorite Pinterest board, and spread the love. If you recreated this please leave a picture of your creation in the comments below. Till next time piece out.
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