So back in November or so we decided we wanted to make the scarecrow/snowman double sided board. We had seen them around and thought they were super cute! I really want less things to have to store. My house is smaller and I have very limited storage space, but I love to decorate for every season and I thought that these double sided boards would solve my storage problem and still let me decorate for the seasons. This month I made the decision to do the spring/summer boards. So here is how we made them.
For the scarecrow/snowman boards we used 4x1 boards. I cut 4 boards 24 inches long, then 2 boards 18 inches for the brim of the hats.
To put the four 24" boards together I used liquid nails in between each board, the I used clamps to make it tight and have them stay put. I let them dry overnight. This picture is of the spring/summer board, but the same principle applied for the scarecrow/snowman board. Once the boards were dry I then place my 18" board where I wanted it and drew a line underneath so I could have the right placement. Then I painted the top and the bottom of the boards. For the snowman I used white on the bottom and black on the top. That probably is what most people would use for a snowman, but the hat could be a different color. While it was drying I also painted the 18" board for the hat brim black. Once everything was dry I used liquid nails on the back of the 18" board and put it in place, then I used a 1 1/2" screw to secure it tight. We are not great at free hand drawing, but we really tried. For the mouth we just drew a squiggly mouth, and free hand a carrot nose. For the eyes we did trace the bottom of a large acrylic paint bottle. It seemed to work perfect. Once we had all the facial features on in pencil we used a black paint marker to outline it all. We then painted the eyes black and the nose orange. You could a put whatever kind of detail you want, but we are simple, so our detail was simple.
For the scarecrow side we simply stained the bottom section and and painted the top and hat brim board brown, then put the brim on the same as before. For the facial details you could make the nose a candy corn, but we wanted it for the whole fall season and thought orange would work for that. But basically we just did the same details as the snowman side except the nose.
For the spring/summer board we also used 4x1 boards but the main boards were 48" long, and the smaller boards were 12" long. All the put together is the same with the liquid nails and the clamps. This time we screwed the small boards on before we painted because we weren't using multiple colors. We also spray painted instead of hand painting just because the boards were so long. The easiest part was putting the vinyl on. Each letter I made 5" tall. I thought it would be cute to have the "i" in spring be a flower and the "u" in summer be a watermelon. Really you could do whatever you wanted and make it your own. The watermelon and the flower I bought in the Silhouette design store. After we got the vinyl on we did spray lacquer on it to make it durable for outside. We also sprayed lacquer on the scarecrow/snowman.
This were probably the cutest crafts we did and they were quite inexpensive. They were probably each around $10 with all the materials. Honestly, I don't know if anyone even looks at this blog, but if anyone does I hope you are noticing a theme. INEXPENSIVE! We try to keep things low cost. By doing that we are able to craft each month. When we first started our craft nights we kind of tried to go big and expensive. What we found is that it made it hard to do every month if it was pricey, and if they were too hard we never finished them. Over the years we have learned the more simple and inexpensive the better! So happy crafting!
