Honesty Sign Makeover

My creative side has started kicking into gear. Poor Chris doesn't know what to think just yet about it.

He came into the garage this past weekend while I was finishing up the staining of my bench, kind of perplexed and we had the following conversation:

C: "I don't lie to you."
K: "That's a good thing. Odd to say now, but good."
C: "Well, do you think I lie to you?!"
K: "Um...not really. You probably have before, but in general, I'd say you're pretty honest with me."
C: "All right, so then why'd you buy me a pink stupid sign?"
K: "Huh? A pink sign?"
C: "Yeah, the dumb looking pink sign that we're never hanging in our house that you got to remind me to tell the truth."

I couldn't stop laughing. I found this at Jo-Ann's, on clearance for $8:



I actually saw it when I went to get fabric the first time, and got so flustered and left empty handed. When I went back the second time, and it was still there, I decided it was a sign and took it home with me. I had big plans for that sign.

First big plan was to get rid of everything except the wood! While I was spray painting the gold frame, I took my trusty can of brown spray paint to the Honesty sign as well. Here's what it (and my big toe) looked like:



I wanted to add a little more blue into our living room to tie in the bench cushion, and my T. Mom had given me her left over blue paint from a room I had liked, so I was resourceful and used what I had. I actually wasn't real sure where I was going with the sign, I kind of just made it up as I went along.

I sanded the entire body of the frame then painted it blue, then sanded again, then added some stain around the frame portion. I decided it was too dark and took an old tee shirt and dabbed it in the blue paint and rubbed it all around the frame again. I decided THAT looked too...pasty...so I stained JUST the edges and wiped them off immediately. I think I redid that 3 or 4 times until I wound up with this:



For inside the sign, I wanted our family name, us, and when we were married. On Sunday, I looked everywhere for stencils that would work, and couldn't find any. I wound up printing off a bunch of different fonts and tracing the one that I liked best:



Then grinned ear to ear when I moved the paper and could actually see my traces!!! It worked!!



Next, I colored in the lines (which is actually super hard for me, and I had a .20 cent small paint brush sitting around, so that wasn't the best either). I thought I was done with this:



Can anyone see what's wrong with that? Yeah...we weren't established in 2005. Chris proposed then, but I did not take his last name till 2006. The funny part about that is that I've been doing this project all week long, and I've had 2005 printed out and sitting on that sign for the entire week. I even took it in to Chris to show him it and he thought it looked great. As I was taking pictures I realized that I screwed up. Sigh...

So, after redoing the 5 to a 6, and repainting and distressing the HART, here's what the final product looks like:



Here's her new home:


And here's the living room view, with that wall now complete. One down, 8923784 to go!!



Again, not perfect, but I still love it because it's so us! I've spent every night this week working on this sign, and I finally decided enough was enough. I love the frame, but think I might re-do the inside again one day. It's good enough for now though!

Thank GOODNESS it's Friday!! Have a great weekend everyone!!  I'm linking up to these fun parties...go check them out!