DIY Distressed Welcome Sign – Rest, Relax, Refresh

After I finished my bench (you can see the tutorial here) I was so excited with how much it freshened up our entry that I wanted to make a new Welcome sign. I aim for our house to be a place where people feel welcome and leave feeling better than they did when they came. I searched for the perfect saying and loved this one.

To make this distressed sign I glued two scraps of 1×6 together. I placed it on a trash bag on something flat. Then I used Gorilla Wood Glue and put it on both sides of the wood edge I’m gluing and then pushed them together. I made sure the top doesn’t have glue sticking out, and if it does I wiped it off. I didn’t worry about the glue if its pooling out onto the trash bag because that is the back. Let it dry for 24 hours.

Then I did a coat of paint in black and let it dry. Next I added a layer of Milk Paint and let it dry for 12 hours. You can use any kind of paint for the top coat, I just like the texture and crackles of Milk paint. Then sand it like crazy!

I prefer a hand sander to make it go faster and to get a really good distressed look. I cut cut my words out on my Cricut machine. The fonts I used are Century for Welcome and Muncie for Rest, Relax, Refresh. I weeded the vinyl in reverse and then pieced the silhouette of the words right onto my sign creating a stencil.

I find its easier to only work a few letters at a time, otherwise they stick to each other.

I mixed up a couple of different colors of acrylic paints to create the perfect shade of navy I wanted. Then I carefully painted the inside of the letters.

I did two coats to make sure I had a really solid shade of navy. When the paint was dry I very carefully pulled off the vinyl.

After letting it dry completely I went at my sign again with my hand sanders. This time you don’t have to sand so much, the words will distress really fast.

You can either use a sawtooth hanger to hang it or use a drill to make holes in the corners. I used rope to hang mine.