It is Well with My Soul

So, I have started the Christmas making gifts frenzy. Last night, I made a sign for my sister Tiffany. I sure hope she doesn't check this blog often. Well, actually I hope she does read the blog often, but I hope she doesn't see this post. If you do, stop reading or it will spoil part of your present!

I have always loved the hymn "It is Well with My Soul" written by Horatio Spafford. If you haven't, you must read the composer bio and it will give a whole new meaning to the hymn. He lost his son, his business, and then all four of his daughters to a ship wreck. Only his wife survived. He managed to pick up the pieces, they had 2 more daughters and moved to Israel and founded a group to serve the poor. I kept thinking of quotes or scriptures to use for her but they were either too long (for me to cut each letter out) or just not perfect. This one just seemed to stick out and felt right, so I made her a sign with "it is well with my soul". Hope she likes it. Hope it also doesn't cost a fortune to ship since it is wood. Might have to send it via ship vs air.
Wishing we weren't so far apart! I have three sisters actually, but the oldest ones, the twins, went to college when I was 11, far from us, then onwards to marry and start their families, and the family gatherings grew fewer and fewer. Don't you hate growing up! Gosh! I knew it from the beginning that I didn't want childhood to pass. I seriously wished that the Peter Pan story could be real and dreaded growing older (or rather dreaded the changes to come). My promise to myself was that I would always remain a carefree child at heart. I have tried, but I have failed. Carefree went out the window a long time ago. But, now having kids of my own, at least I am able to relieve some of life's greatest moments and discoveries and get down on the ground and truly play again. Desperately wishing our family could all be together again for the holidays, but I don't have the leave time/money to make it happen this year. And "coming home" is never the same when you are older. It is wonderful and needed and I crave it, but I always leave with a desire for something that just never comes back. So strange. I'll never understand that. I think the "coming home" desire could have a post all to itself.

Enough babble, on toward the tutorial of how to make a sign without a Silhouette. First, I googled some images of the words and found a sign at 13pumpkins on etsy that inspired my version.  You can buy her sign and lots of other awesome ones at her etsy shop http://www.etsy.com/shop/13pumpkins.

1) First, since I don't have a Silhouette machine, I printed out the words I wanted to use in Microsoft Word at home.  I played with the fonts a little and made the font size 260 and 300. I placed the pages on the sign to make sure I picked the right sizes. Maya, my lab, was trying to help too.

 2. I had scrap wood leftover from making the Power of Tower, so I just nailed the boards to 2 skinny long pieces of wood and painted them all in Annie Sloan Chalk Paint White Linen.

3. Then I cut out each letter/word and the bird picture using scissors and glued them to the sign using a glue stick.

4. Next I painted over the whole sign in Annie Sloan Chalk Paint Duck Egg Blue.

 5. Once the paint was mostly dry, I pulled the paper off. Some stuck a little so I had to scrape it off.

6. I had to do some touch ups with the white paint, wax it, and then sand to make it more vintage looking. I also had to cut off the last two pieces of wood to make it smaller. Below is the finished result.