With Halloween coming up, I decided to make a “Double Double Toil and Trouble” sign.
Frame and sign blank
I started with a thrift store frame I had bought a few years back, thinking it was the perfect size (11 1/2 inches by 36 inches) for a subway sign. It was, but I never could decide what I wanted the sign to say, so the frame sat empty.
Until I decided to make it a Halloween sign. Once I had that in mind, the “Double Double Toil and Trouble” verse from Macbeth immediately popped into my head.
Before I could paint the sign, I needed a sign blank.
Fortunately, my husband has lots of plywood laying around, so I just stole a piece from his stash (and sweet talked him into cutting it on his table saw for me).
Painting my Halloween sign
With the plywood trimmed to fit, I pulled out some black chalk paint I had on hand and started painting.
To get full coverage, I had to give the sign blank two coats of paint.
Designing the sign
Then I drew up the design. I used InDesign, but there are so many great simple graphic design programs online these days (like Canva), it really doesn’t take any special skills or software to design a sign anymore.
The serif font I used is Copperplate, and the sans serif ones are all some version of Arial. The smiling skull and crossbones is a (really big) Wingding.
After I had my design, I printed it out on my ink jet printer. It fit horizontally onto a letter sized piece of paper, but vertically it tiled onto five sheets.
My printer added the vertical stripes all on its own. (👻 Oooh, spooky. 👻)
I lined all the pages up, overlapping the words that spilled from one page onto the next. Then I trimmed off the bottom edge of each page and Scotch taped the pieces together.
Transferring the design
In order to transfer the design, I rubbed chalk over the back of the paper.
Then I flipped the page back over, centered it over my sign blank and traced around the letters.
When I had the letters all traced, I held my breath and started peeling the paper away to see if the design transferred.
It worked!
Except for a couple lines that I missed while tracing, the design transferred perfectly.
Time to paint!
Once I had my outlines made, I just painted inside the lines with some white acrylic paint.
I tried working from the outside in so I wouldn’t smear the chalk lines while painting.
When I got to the line of dots, I dipped the other end of my brush into the paint and pressed the dots onto the board.
The completed Halloween sign
When I finally had everything painted, I slid my picture back into the frame and called it done.
Then I set the sign out on display on my front porch.
I like it.
What do you think?
If you liked this post, check out more of my sign painting posts!