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Love the look of those rustic wood Christmas signs? This FREE Christmas SVG makes it easy to create your own for that handmade look! See how to apply adhesive vinyl to wood, shortcuts to save you time and money and other ideas for the free svg file!
Apply Vinyl Create a DIY Farmhouse Sign and a bonus FREE SVG Christmas file!
It's only October, and we haven't even made it past Halloween yet, but I just had Judy Garland singing the words "have yourself a merry little Christmas" in my ear. Yes, I may have already started streaming Christmas music through Pandora. What can I say? The holiday is short! Plus, when I'm creating fun Christmas crafts to share with you it helps set the mood!
I have to tell you that I'm totally crushing on the farmhouse style wooden signs that I'm seeing in all the home and craft stores. When I was asked if I wanted to participate in the Cricut Holiday Event I jumped at the chance knowing that I would be making one of those trendy signs! And I couldn't resist making more! Check out how my "Home for the Holidays" sign looks and be sure to grab the FREE SVG file!
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—Want the SVG file right now? Want to jump straight to all the Cricut Holiday Event Projects? Simply scroll straight to the bottom!—
There are so many fun Christmas phrases and quotes, so it took me a while to decide on which one I wanted to create the most. I finally decided on this one, but am thinking of creating even more free files. What do you think? Would you like to maybe see more? Maybe with the words "joy" or "hope" or "believe"?
So let's talk about the sign- shall we? I debated doing a large wooden sign like I showed you here. Which you totally can with this SVG-- you could easily split it up and put it on a very large object once scaled. BUT there is time involved in staining or painting a large piece of wood and during the holidays so many of us are pressed for signs. So enter a pre-made wooden sign blank!
You can find blank wood signs at your local hobby craft store (I found mine at Hobby Lobby) or you can go with trusty Amazon.com. They have a large variety of pre-made blank rustic wood signs. So my first time saver is to let someone lay the ground work for you! I really liked the white washed middle and the vintage gray stain on the outside, so I was sold on this one.
Using your Cricut (or other SVG cutting machine) makes customizing DIY signs super easy and the possibilities are endless. In addition to creating or using a pre-made design, you have several options on how you want to transfer it to the material. I went back and forth on if I wanted to use the outlines of the letters as a stencil and paint the font on the wood sign, or if I just wanted to press a colored adhesive vinyl onto the wood surface.
I ended up going with using adhesive vinyl for several reasons. The #1 reason was because of the size of some of the details of the letters. If you look, they are pretty skinny and intricate. I was worried that paint might seep below such an intricate time (it might not but I'm paranoid!). BUT the main reason I picked vinyl---- to save money and to save on storage space.
Say what? So if I would have painted a Christmas saying directly on the wood, I would have had to either repaint again later, or I'd have it taking up space in the attic for another 10 ½ months of the year. By using vinyl, I can take it off and pick a new quote or word. In case I decide to change my mind and just use green in my decorations, I can easily cut another color of vinyl. The actual sign will go strong all year long, and I'm looking forward to decorating with it in the months to come.
The lightening is pretty poor, but I wanted you to see an example of the sign on my dining room dish display shelves. See how easy it would be to swap out the SVG cut to something for say spring or summer? I also designed a simple "welcome" file that I think would work well year round.
Tips to applying adhesive vinyl to wood:
- Applying adhesive vinyl to a piece of wood is pretty straight forward. Unlink iron on vinyl, there is no need to reverse or invert any designs. What you cut is what you get! Using transfer tape makes it so easy to get the lettering exactly where you want it. You do need to be patient when transferring, but as long as you take your time and work the vinyl along, you should have total success.
- I find raw wood allows the vinyl to stick pretty well. I sometimes rough it up a bit with sandpaper to give the wood a bit of "tooth" so the vinyl has something to stick with. I had no issues with the glitter vinyl sticking to this Thanksgiving wooden centerpiece.
- If your using a newly painted surface, you want to make sure the paint has dried for at least 4 hours. I would suggest sanding it, but if you want a pristine finish you can coat with a polycrylic or mod podge.
- If you really want to make sure it sticks to the surface, another option is to use iron on vinyl and iron directly to the wood. Yes, that is totally possible too! Just be super careful and don't forget to reverse your design!
Things you need to make a DIY farmhouse sign:
So what do you think? Are you ready for the holiday crafting to begin, or have I started too soon? Would you like more free Christmas SVG files? Leave me a comment and let me know. To get the FREE Christmas SVG file, simply scroll down a bit more!
Like this post? You might also enjoy these other posts:
Same sign....different design!
Home for the Holidays 2020 Sign and SVG file!
Fixer Upper inspired holiday house tour
Personalized Stockings Using A Cricut
And now, what you've all been waiting for!
Free Christmas SVG File:
Download FREE Christmas SVG HERE! **Personal use only please!
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See all the Cricut holiday projects below!
Jessica says
Thank you for sharing such an in-depth tutorial!