the thrift whisperer

My cousin and his girlfriend are having their first baby, a little boy. The baby shower is soon, and we have exhausted the Pinterest boards and Etsy favorites saving ideas for the shower. It’s going to be dinosaur themed, but I wanted to come up with a little yard sign that could also be used for future family showers no matter the theme. I have a large family so I’m confident it could get more than one use. 🙂

I’ve never made an outdoor sign like this before, so I started with a pack of wooden circles from Michaels. It came in a two pack for $10, but I only used one of them for this project. I think a great idea would be to make a matching “it’s a girl” sign with the other circle, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

For this project, I employed my Cricut Explore. I found the stork image online and reversed it, then printed the outline on some vinyl and traced around it. I have the exact file saved here in Cricut Design Space (for free), please feel free to use it: https://design.cricut.com/landing/project-detail/6488cadc88652eb3c1c584e5

In order to make the design fit on my regular cutting mat, I sliced it up and then just made sure to line up the vinyl slices correctly onto the wooden circle:

Don’t worry about the bubbling around the vinyl. This is only being used to trace an outline anyway.

After placing the vinyl, I took a regular pencil and traced the outline so I knew where the painting needed to take place.

At this point, you can pull the vinyl off of the board and get to painting. I started with a few coats of white primer. I just used regular acrylic paint found at the dollar store for the whole project.

My plan was to have the bag the stork is carrying say “it’s a boy”, and I wanted it to have a little more detail. So I got sort of fancy with it and ordered some Basswood sheets from Amazon to make circles with the words cut out from it. I also needed to order a special knife blade for the Cricut in order to cut this material, which is something I didn’t realize at first.

This design can also be found on my Cricut profile for free. I also made a version for “it’s a girl”, the layer is just hidden in the file. https://design.cricut.com/landing/project-detail/64939fdc88652eb3c1c72ea5

You should be warned that this took THREE HOURS to cut. Not a big deal, but I had no idea it would take that long and wasn’t expecting it. My machine did 14 passes of the design.

Some progress with the painting and with the circle cutout. You might notice I did some patching and didn’t do a great job of color matching the brown at this point.

To attach, I used some good old Gorilla Glue on the circle cutout. Also! Since these letters have cutouts, I did have to take the middle pieces for the a, b, and o and glue them in place.

It felt like we couldn’t have an “it’s a boy” sign without some classic blue accents, so I painted the circle cutout blue and added some more accents. I also did a little better at matching the brown of the circle plaque.

At this point, I needed to attach a stake to the sign so it could go in the ground. I picked one up an edging stake from the hardware store just like this one https://www.lowes.com/pd/COL-MET-12-in-Black-Steel-Edging-Stake/1000576001?cm_mmc=shp--c--prd--lwn--ggl--LIA_LWN_236_Hardscapes--1000576001--local--0-_-0&gclid=CjwKCAjw2K6lBhBXEiwA5RjtCYzSycF75joZzi42DUGCOaB7OFnnJduXQQqnZ1DuLy1qVOQGWaJQoRoC9bkQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds. To attach, I just used more Gorilla Glue as the board was quite thin and I didn’t want to bother with a drill. I recommend marking the center of the board with some pencil so the stake is centered.

After gluing, I placed some heavy brass candlesticks on top for the glue to set in place.

For some finishing touches, I used Sharpie Oil Paint markers in silver (for accents) and white (for outlining). I followed up with some Rustoleum Clear Coat spray paint to keep the sign protected from the elements. Then put the sign right in the ground. Happy crafting.

*This post may contain affiliate links.