One way to make a sign

When I was a little girl, my Mom saved every card and calender that spoke to her .  She would cut out what she loved and would make gift tags, adorn a package or make a picture.  I remember watching her carefully cutting around delicate edges with so much patience.

Well, I don't have that much patience!  

I had a sign that I had bought over the summer because I loved the shape of it.  

I hung it over my stove, but if you all know me..it didn't go with anything in my kitchen.  

So, I've had it in storage for a few months and decided to make a new sign with it...

So of course I get on the internet, start getting ideas and it came to me!  I know it has to do with me only having 5 hours of sleep in 3 days.  But that's how I usually get my ideas...sleep deprived!

I found this on Pinterest under Printables.  Loved the old look of it!  I planned on painting it since my printer never gets the colors right.

Then I found this printable of roses...aren't they pretty?!

Then I painted my sign a flat white...3 coats to be exact.

While it was drying, (this is where I thought about Mom and her patience), I cut out the Merry Christmas and the rose printables.  I was seeing double by the time I finished!

Then I laid everything out on my sign and then modged podged the back of it, not the top since I still wanted to paint.

I thought the blue was perfect until I finished it....YUCK!  Definitely didn't look right with those roses.  The color of the roses were purple, so I started painting over them with some of my hot pink watered down paint so that it wouldn't cover it up...just add some color.

I added some green and definition to the leaves then made the whispy vines to make it more like I had hand painted it all.

That's when I started trying to change the blue Merry Christmas and adding more pink to the roses.

Here you can see it's starting to shape up.  I kept adding to get more definition.  I just played around with things until I liked it. 

Then I sanded the edges on the sign to make it look worn.

And here it is...all finished!  After everything was painted and dry, I went over the whole sign with modge podge to seal it all.

Didn't it turn out pretty?!!!  

I love how it turned out looking really vintage!

Here's another sign I did the other night but it is all hand painted..no cheating here.

So there ya have how I cheated on making my Merry Christmas sign.  Really, the hand painted one took less time than it did....so really cheating wasn't that easy! lol