DIY Wood Signs Are So Easy to Make!!

Make your own DIY wood signs by following this step by step tutorial!

After remodeling my hallway a few months ago, I moved on to my laundry room.  It was the last room that I had never touched in the 15 years that we have lived here. 

I did not want to spend much money since it’s just a laundry room but I wanted it to be a place where I liked going in to (I know that’s a hard task, right??).  Make sure to check out the full post on my farmhouse laundry room makeover for all the details.

If you have been following me for a while you know I love to make things instead of spending money and of course, that meant I needed to make one of my DIY wood signs to add some character to the laundry room. 

So, today I have a step by step DIY wood signs tutorial with a lot of pictures and also a free SVG laundry cut file!

Materials for Laundry DIY Wood Signs:

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• A piece of wood or MDF cut to the size you want the sign
• Paint – I used a combination of regular wall paint and chalk paint – just what I had on hand
• contact paper or oracal 631 for stencil
• Cricut or another cutting machine (Cricuts are amazing!  You can check out my Ultimate Cricut Ideas guide here!)
• Laundry SVG cut file – Download my PNG file for free by clicking here!  Or SVG Here. 
• As with all my files, these are for personal use only.  If you would like to purchase a commercial use license, click here.

How to Make Your Own DIY Wood Sign:

• Find a piece of wood or MDF that is the size you want and make sure it’s sanded and smooth.  I had a spare piece of MDF that I had painted on before so I just painted over it.   Start by painting the color you want the wording to be.  I just used some Alabaster wall paint that I had used to paint my new DIY shaker cabinets.
• I always put a paintbrush I’m going to use again in a plastic bag so it doesn’t dry out.

Prepare your DIY stencil: 

• Upload the SVG file into Cricut Design Space and size it to a little smaller than your board.  The Cricut won’t cut anything longer than 23.5 inches so I always make sure my boards are shorter than that to make it easy.
• For this project, I used contact paper as a stencil since that’s what I had on hand.  It doesn’t stick as well so there tends to be a bit more paint bleeds but it’s not hard to touch up.  I cut the contact paper on the vinyl setting.
• Then pull off the surrounding contact paper and weed out the small pieces inside the letters with a weeding tool.

• Then apply transfer tape or clear contact paper to cover the whole design.  (Remove the backing if you are using contact paper) I usually use transfer tape on my DIY wood signs but since I was using contact paper, I used clear contact paper since it isn’t as tacky as the transfer tape.  When it’s less tacky, the contact paper peels off better.  However, if I were using vinyl, I would have used transfer tape. 
• Scrape down the transfer tape with a scraper.

• Then align the whole thing on your board and add a strip of painter’s tape down the middle to hold it in place.

• Pull the transfer tape up on one side and cut off the paper backing behind it.

• Then slowly lay down the transfer tape smoothing it out from the middle to the sides.  Then scrape it on the board.

• Then you are going to remove the blue tape.  The stencil will stay in place since the other side is already stuck to the board.  Fold over the transfer tape and pull off the backing and again lay it down slowly while smoothing it out.

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• Scrape it down really well!  You might need to go over it several times trying to get all the corners to stick.  Start pulling off the transfer tape.  Sometimes the contact paper doesn’t want to stick as well as vinyl will so you might need to scrape it down more or hold it down with your finger.
• Scrape it down one more time but make sure not to scrape the edges up!

Time to Start Painting Your DIY Sign

• Now paint a coat of the same color over the lettering!  This helps to prevent bleeding from the top color.
• Let that coat dry and then paint on your topcoat color.  I used Waverly Elephant chalk paint color from Wal-Mart.  I like chalk paint because it is easy to sand off to get a rustic look.  I don’t paint my whole board either.  I leave a little white showing on the edges.

• If you want to sand your edges, do that once your paint is dry.  You can also add a varnish or coat of poly here to seal it.  I didn’t since it’s just going in my laundry room and won’t get touched or knocked.
• Once the top coat is dry (usually about an hour) you will start pulling off your stencils.  I use a weeding tool but you could also use a utility knife.  Try not to gauge holes in the board or scratch it too much!
• I had a few bleed throughs which I usually get when using contact paper.  Just take a small paint brush and go back through and touch them up.

That’s it!  Not as hard you thought, right?  Making your own DIY wood signs saves so much money and can be personalized to whatever you want it to say!

Hammer a sawtooth hanger or whatever you like to use and hang it up!

To check out how I painted the cabinets click here!  Or to see how easy it is to install plank flooring click here.

I love what it adds to my laundry room!  If you want to check out other DIY wood signs I’ve made with my Cricut click here.

Let me know if you have any questions.  Thanks for stopping by. 

Have a great day!

If you’d like to save this tutorial for later, you can Pin it now if you’d like!