Bathroom sign

I haven’t done a blog on ‘Kate’s makes’ for a while so that is what is on the agenda for today. I have had this project in mind for months, and the supplies for even longer! One of my favourite shops (please note Steph, just one) is The White Company. I love this shop, I feel like it was created for me, although I don’t get to buy hardly anything there as it is so expensive. Anyway, when I was passing there well over a year ago, I noticed that they had a basket full of lovely pieces of ply wood that were spray painted beautiful shades of blue. I was so excited. As you may have noticed I love me a bit of blue and white 💙 They were marked up at 50p a piece, so I decided to buy some, 10 in fact. When I got to the counter the assistant asked me what I was planning on doing with them, I said I had absolutely no idea but I was so drawn to them and that I was sure I would have an idea at some point. I was very happy with my purchase, even though I didn’t know what it was for, the fact that they all cost only £5 made it a double wammy!

So about 6 or so months ago (maybe even longer) I decided I would create this bathroom sign. I saw the words on Pinterest and thought that is what I want to do as it something I am feeling more and more passionately about for me and for others. Dreaming is so important if we are to become all that we were created for!

One of the things that put me off was the printing off of the words and getting them transferred onto the ply so I could then hand paint them. Honestly, it was so easy, with a bit of help from Mr H 😉

So here is what I did.

I got 6 of the pieces of ply in varying shades. I wanted a rustic, beachy look so arranged them with the faded ends alternately, I also arranged them so they were staggered.  I needed  to create a mount and something for the sign to actually hang from, so I bought a length of wood (about 4cm wide and about 0.2mm thick) measured two pieces of equal size to stick vertically behind the ply (long enough to stick all pieces on, but still smaller than the sign itself so that it didn’t show from behind). Once I had measured, I asked the lovely Mr H to cut it for me, which I absolutely could of done myself but chose not too 😝

After that was finished it was time to decide on the font and size of the words, which as I said I had some help with. We had to play about with it a bit before I was happy with the way it looked. Once they were printed I cut around each of the words so I could position them on the ply.  To start with I was going to do it all central, but again, after a bit of a play I decided it would look better starting from the left and moving further right with each word, but with the main word ‘Dreams’ being central. Almost like a wave as it flows in.

Once I had all the words in place all I had to do was trace round each of them. The ply is so soft it didn’t take much pressure at all, in fact I had to be careful not to over emphasise, firstly so that if I made any mistakes it wouldn’t  show too much and also because I was hand painting it and didn’t want the edges to be too deep.

The last phase was to get the paint, (I used white acrylic, whether that is the best paint to use or not I’m not sure but it worked well enough for me) and I started painting the words. This was the trickiest part as you need a steady hand (which mine is not always) and a lot of patience. I had quite a backache after, but I was so pleased with the result that I didn’t care!

The sign is now hanging in our master bathroom and I am very pleased with it indeed 💙