Do-It-Yourself Wedding Present

133 Shares

We were invited to a wedding reception of a “kid” that I’ve known from our homeschool group for several years. He’s also been helping to instruct my children in karate for a couple of years. When we decided to go to the reception, I knew exactly what I wanted to make as their wedding gift. I had seen some similar examples online on other DIY blogs and had snagged some old porch spindles that my parents were going to put in a rummage sale, for use in my crafts. I kept procrastinating…and we didn’t get it finished until just 30 short minutes before we were supposed to be there.

Here is the story of how I turned this:

Into this:

I started by sanding the spindle down really well, getting the old stain off, as it was cracking and chipping.

Then, we (being Mr. Sidetracked and I) cut the wood for the tops and bottoms and got it ready for painting as well. We did not measure. We just eyed it, to get it where it seemed right. After that, we primed and painted each board and spindle. Once the paint was dried, we screwed the bottom board and top board into place.

After we screwed the bottom piece and top piece into place, we wood glued the top board on and then screwed the hook into place.

I love how the hook really dressed it up!

Meanwhile, we were working on the “Welcome” sign. I printed out the size and font I wanted onto card stock and cut it out with a blade, since I don’t own a Cricket or anything that can cut vinyl (yet anyway). We spray painted the board black and after it had dried, attached my homemade stencil and began spraying it with white.

We had some overspray and some extra white in places that we didn’t really want it, so we roughed it up with some sandpaper a bit and then sprayed a really light coat of white spray paint over the black…making it a bit speckled. The sign isn’t perfect….but I LOVE it anyway! Mr. Sidetracked drilled two holes into the corners of the sign and put baling wire through the holes so that we could hang it from the hook. You could easily change out the sign for something more season specific.

The final product, you’ve already seen….but it doesn’t feel complete without showing it one more time! I

Here are a couple of my “helpers”, hanging out in the grass while we worked….