YAH: Man Cave Sign

I wasn't around much last week because I was doing a lot of "rerun" crafts. But this coming week I will have plenty to share with you. For now, in honor of Father's Day, I thought I'd share a simple Young-at-Heart craft that I made my husband a couple months back. He's not a father, but we do have two cats,

so I think that counts. He's always talking about wanting a man cave. He's in the process of fixing up the basement, but it's going to take awhile. So to cheer him up a little bit, I made a sign that now hangs in our basement stairway. I found this basic wooden sign at Michaels.

It even had the hardware for hanging it on the back. I used my acrylic paints and painted the rim Raw Umber and painted the inside a mixture of Raw Umber and Titanium White. Then I used my computer and printed out the words MAN CAVE on regular paper.

I flipped the paper over and scribbled with a pencil until I had the whole thing covered.

Then I flipped it back over and lined it up on my wooden sign and traced the letters, pushing down hard. When I picked the paper up, the letters had been transferred to the sign.

I used Raw Umber again and painted the letters.

When it was dry, I hung it up on an overhang above the stairway.

So even though he doesn't have his dream Man Cave yet, he has the sign to remind him, someday...
As a joke, I printed out Lady Palace on bright pink paper and taped it to the last riser going up the steps. So first he went down into the basement and saw the man cave sign, then as he was coming up he saw the lady palace sign! And he left it there, too!