Vintage Fall Sign Using Carbon Paper

 

Did you know you can create your own signs just using inexpensive carbon paper from Amazon and a sharpie?! You don’t need any expensive equipment to make beautiful signs yourself! The best part is, you can design anything you want!

If you want to watch the full tutorial, you can check out my YouTube here: https://youtu.be/fPlJT_qCKts

I started with this wood canvas that I got in the Dollar Tree Plus section. They usually have these at craft stores or you can grab any wood piece to make your sign.

I decided to stain my wood canvas using wet acrylic paint. I just kept my brush wet while painting with a brown/tan color that I mixed up. You can just use stain or paint it if you’d prefer, but I love using this technique to stain.

After painting the entire thing with the wet acrylic paint, I wiped off any excess with a paper towel and let it completely dry before moving to the next step.

I used photoshop to create my own autumn market sign. If you don’t have photoshop, there are free websites out there like Canva that you can use to create your sign. After I created my design, I used regular printer paper to trace out my design (I had to tape two pieces together to fit my sign). You can just print out your design, but I don’t like to waste ink since this is just going to be used to trace it onto the wood.

Then I grabbed some of my carbon paper (you can kind of see I also had to use a sheet and about a quarter of another sheet to fill my sign). I buy my carbon paper from Amazon and it’s very inexpensive.

I taped the carbon paper to my wood canvas so it doesn’t slide around and then I taped my printer paper to the carbon paper. I used the pressure tool that comes with my carbon paper and traced over all the words in my sign.

The carbon paper leaves an impression on the surface and you can even save that piece of carbon paper to use several more times before you have to throw it out!

Then I grabbed a marker and just traced over the words and colored them in! You can use a paint marker too for this part, but I find it easier to use a market for smaller details like lettering.

After I traced and colored in my words, I added some details to the sign starting with making a line at the top and bottom using my marker and a ruler.

Then I grabbed some stamps I got from Amazon to make some pretty details in the center of the lines.

I also used some Fall stamps that I got from Amazon as well. I added some pumpkins first.

Then I decided to add another line to separate the top words.

And I added some fall leaves to that line from the same stamp set.

And that was it!! A really simple Autumn sign just using some inexpensive items.