Vintage Wooden Amusement Signs

I have loved how a lot of the free shapes of the week lately have actually been a group of designs that you can use together or can just pull one or two helpful ones out to complete a project you’ve been planning for a long time.  Recently, my husband and I finished a portion of our attic to create a new game room in our home, and the space looks beautiful…but it’s completely empty right now!  We intend to move a television, some game systems, and a pool table into the space, but just haven’t had the time.  So, that just means I have a completely blank slate to play with and decorate now.

The rest of my house is pretty gender-neutral with classic decor, but since the game room will be off by itself and just feels a little manly, I decided it couldn’t hurt to go a little vintage when decorating.  When I saw this week’s free shape bundle, I was immediately inspired by the ticket shapes to create some vintage-looking entertainment signs.

• I started out with two pieces of three-quarter inch plywood that I had sanded to a nice smooth finish on both the edges and top and bottom.
• Both of my “posters” were designed in the Studio software (more on that later), printed on Silhouette Printable Heat Transfer Material for Dark Fabrics, and cut using my CAMEO.
• When you peel away the backing, you’re left with a super-thin flexible material on which your design is printed.  I choose this material for my signs because it looks like you painted the wood yourself when you’re finished.

• Line the design up with the edges of your wood piece, place a pressing cloth on top, and press with an iron just as you would with a t-shirt.
• After I took this picture in my craft room, I took the pieces outside, sanded the edges of my pressed design to rough them up just a bit, then painted them with diluted white acrylic paint to resemble a whitewash.

Depending on the fabric that your pressing cloth is made of, you can achieve some really awesome texture with the heat transfer material on wood.

• To make the movie poster, I started by creating a rectangular background filled with the Candy Cane Grunge pattern and rotating the pattern forty-five degrees.
• I took the ticket shape from the free shape bundle and did an internal offset to create a double border.  Then I filled the larger ticket shape with the Neutral Tan pattern, and placed the smaller ticket shape that was filled with the Gold Confetti Pattern on top, making this pattern about 75% translucent.
• The popcorn box was just filled in with color and assembled to make a printable design.  I added a few elements from the Cinema Set to the corners for a little more detail.
• Lastly, I created the text using the Raspberry Font and adjusted the spacing so that the words could be welded.  The red mat for the text was made using the Offset Tool.

• I wanted my signs to go together even though they’re inspired by different decades and events, so the circus sign was designed in much of the same way.  The rectangular background was filled with the same Candy Cane Grunge pattern, but this time I did not rotate the pattern.
• I filled the ticket design from the free shape bundle with the Circus Elephant pattern and added the Big Top Border design to the bottom of my sign.
• I finished the design off by adding my text in both the LD Petticoat Black and LD Wantedfonts.  The stars added to “Circus” were taken from the Big Top Border design.

I also printed out some ticket strips from the free shape bundle on Silhouette Printable Adhesive Kraft Paper to add around my signs once I’ve figured where to put them in my new room.  There are so many possibilities with all of the shapes included in this week’s freebie…how are you going to use them?

Shapes Used:

• Here and Now
• Candy Cane Grunge
• Big Top Border
• Circus Elephant
• Cinema Set
• Popcorn Box
• Gold Confetti Pattern
• Neutral Tan

Fonts Used:

• LD Petticoat Black
• LD Wanted
• Raspberry Font