DIY Wood Transfer Sign

Oh it feels so good to be creative!  So far today I have made a bracelet, a necklace, sugar cookie cut outs and this wood transfer sign on top of a trip to Hobby Lobby, Dollar Tree and Wal-Mart.  I still have dinner to make, wood to cut and trays to construct for my pantry project.  Oh, I haven't told you about my pantry project have I?  Well out of all the projects buzzing around in my head, I decided to start on reorganizing our pantry.  But that is a completely different post(s).  This post is about this:

I cannot even begin tell you how skeptical I have been about this project.  Skeptical and intimidated.  I've seen this on Pinterest plenty of times, read the posts and have thought...really?  That's it?  YES!  this project took less than 10 minutes, including sanding, painting and transferring the image.  And inexpensive I might add.  I bought a roll of wax paper for $1.18! 

I've had a sign like this in my head for the longest time so I knew what I've wanted to make.  I used Photoshop Elements to create the design, but of course any document program (Microsoft Word) will work just as well.  I flipped the image to make sure when I transferred it came out correctly.  

Here is what I did:

Materials:

glue stick

wax paper

printer paper

ink jet printer

image

wood

ruler/scissors

Directions:

1.  Glue a piece of printer paper onto wax paper using a glue stick.

 2.  Trim off the edges on the wax paper. I lined a metal ruler along the edge and tore the wax paper along the edge of the ruler.  Easy peasy.

 3.  Now, print your image onto the wax paper by placing it in your paper tray of your printer, wax side down.  DO NOT touch the image after it prints.  It'll smudge and smear.  I have a Brother printer with generic ink I bought off of Amazon.  No going to Staples.  No going to Kinkos.  No gluing the paper on the wood and dissolving it with water.  Nope, none, nada. 

4.  Now flip that sucker over onto your piece of wood.  I have a 6x12 scrap piece of wood in my garage I've been eying for a while now wondering what to do with it.  I sanded and painted it with a white acrylic paint. You may want to cut the image down so you don't end up with a crooked image.  Not me.  I'm a daredevil. 

5.  I used my handy dandy stone scraper to transfer the image onto the wood.  Hold the paper in place and gently scrape the paper along the image.  

6.  Wait for it.  Take a deep breath.  Let it out.  And remove the paper to find this:

I literally jumped up and down with excitement!  But quietly so not to wake the babies.  I couldn't believe it worked!  Look how fancy!! 

Be prepared for plenty more wood transfer projects.  This is a game changer for me people!

DIY Mason Jar Sconces

I love all things mason jars!  I'm very picky about what band wagons I jump on and this is one I had no problem hopping on!  I've mentioned Mim several times in my posts and my About Me page and she is the reason why I love them!  She always has a mason jar of really strong black tea sitting on her counter.  She just pours a little in a cup then adds her water and ice.  We love them so much that we've started drinking out of them ourselves!

When we started our Living Room project, I knew I wanted to make mason jar sconces to replace our old ones.  I looked up several different styles and combined a few different types to make these.  My husband helped me on these some but for the most part this project was all mine!  It feels good to make something yourself doesn't it?

We used left-over 2x6 from our rustic-x coffee table and cut them down to 25 inches in length, the length of our old sconces.

Then, we cut a second piece that was 6 inches.  But before we screwed that piece, we glued and screwed our triangle to the bottom of our 6 inch piece, making it a little easier to secure.

We secured it from the back by pre-drilling and counter sinking our screws so they were flush with the wood.  I stained them with a diluted black stain to match our coffee table then used 2 heavy duty d brackets on the back of each sconce to hang them on the wall.

You'll want to make sure to put your d brackets on before you hang your jar! To hang them, I used 1 inch thick eye hooks.  To attach the wire to the jar, I removed the seal cap and screwed two tiny holes (big enough for the wire to go through) on each side of the screw on lid, then I laced the wire through the drilled holes and then twisted the wire up and around itself and attached the jar. Did you follow that?  There are a few different ways to attach the wire and the eye hook, you'll find whichever way works for you.  We attached the eye hook to the sconce first, strung the wire through then attached the wire to the lid AND THEN screwed on the jar.  Whew.  What a process.  It's easy, I promise.

We wanted the jars to hang down 6 inches from the eye hook which took careful measuring!  I started out with 18 inch wire then cut it down as I went to make sure they hung evenly.

These jars completely finished the room.  They most definitely compliment the large yellow clock and tone it down.  Have I mentioned that I love this room?

Living Room {Part III}

I'm so happy I want to cry.  This is my new favorite place to sit and be.  It's a long way away from where it was last month.  If you haven't seen the before pictures, you must.  But don't judge me.  We've been so busy with our two little ones we haven't had time to focus on decorating.

A few months ago, we decided to throw my father in law a surprise party for his 60th birthday.  It was the perfect motivator to get this room done!  This project cost us around $200 by the time we bought paint, fabric and wood for the table.  It was a $200 well spent!  I hope you're inspired!

Check out our new Living Room!

Isn't the rustic-x table just beautiful?

Okay, how cute are these?!  I love my mason jar sconces!

We made this photo tree for my father-in-law's 60th suprise birthday party.  We hung pictures with twine and made Hanging Lightbulb Vases!  Adorable!

I decided to make our curtain tie backs with our yellow chevron fabric to help balance the yellow in the room.  They couldn't be more perfect.

Now what shall we do next?

Living Room Pillows

You must see the incredible job my MIL did on these pillows.  Gosh, I am so pleased.  She made sure the seams were perfect and that the designs matched.  And they do.  Perfectly.  PERFECTLY.

If you haven't see the "before" pictures of the Living Room, you have to see the dramatic difference between then and now.  Between paint, new decor and pillows we are transforming this room!    

We finally have more yellow to help balance out the clock.  We will be making curtain tie backs with the yellow chevron to help spread it out.  Yellow is so fun, isn't it?

I love these two patterns together.

 Look what an incredible job she did!  This was no easy task. 

 Beautiful, just beautiful.

 I want to spend all of my time in our Living Room.  Just sitting and staring at everything.

I love them!  We can't wait to get our rustic x table complete!  It should be assembled this weekend and we will be sanding and staining this week.  Hopefully I'll be posting pictures next weekend!