DIY Christmas Sign Using Printable and Adhesive Vinyl

I was finishing up some of my Christmas decorating when I realized I NEEDED one of those cute tree signs that I have seen in every store this year. I spent a day looking for the perfect sign for my shelf and had no luck! Everything was sold out or not what I was looking for. So I turned to my Cricut and made my own! This was the first time I’ve used Cricut’s printable vinyl and I have to say I’m pretty impressed with it!

My dad had some old wood lying around his garage and cut me this board that is about 16 x 20 inches!

I knew that I wanted a distressed look for this project so I started by painted my board a grey. I only did one coat and was okay with it being streaky and a little thin in places because I later covered it up.

Once the grey was dry I took my white paint and did a couple of coats over the grey. I wanted this one to be much more smooth.

Once it was all dry I took some sand paper and started distressing it.

This is how you get the original grey colour we painted to show through giving it a distressed, weathered look. I sanded it very lightly overall and more thoroughly in certain areas where I wanted the grey to really stand out.

Next I went to Cricut Design Space and began creating what I wanted my sign to look like! I found this image on google and uploaded it to Design Space and added my words. After sizing everything I realized my image was too large to print or cut. I used the slice tool on parts of image so they would not cut as one piece. After you will put them back together!

This was the first time I was using printable vinyl. First you print it then load it into the Cricut and it cuts just like it would any other surface. I was very impressed that the ink didn’t rub off or smudge. I have worked a lot with Cricut’s sticker paper in the past and thought that it might be a very similar product. However I found that the vinyl unlike the sticker paper was as thin as regular vinyl.

After printing and cutting my truck on printable vinyl, I loaded my black adhesive vinyl and cut my words,

Next I weeded all of my words.

And then applied Transfer tape to them all. I didn’t apply transfer tape to the truck. This image was large and simple enough that it was easier to apply it by hand. However now I am wondering how well the colours hold up to the transfer tape. If you have experience with his leave a comment below. I’m also going to try this out for myself soon!

Next I did A LOT of measuring! Because my project was so large and in so many pieces I wanted to try to lay things out as closely as I had pictured.

When starting this project I didn’t have much hope for it but was so happy with how it came out! The best part was that I only used supplies that I already had so I didn’t have to buy anything new for this project! Picture below also features the beautiful Christmas arrangement my mom made me!