This personalized Welcome Home Block Set is a great gift for new homeowner.
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Welcome back for another round of the Monthly Home Depot Gift Challenge (Note: We are not affiliated with Home Depot in any way…we just spend A LOT of time there!) where we’ve teamed up with a talented group of bloggers to challenge ourselves to come up with a new DIY project each month based on an item found at Home Depot and a gift recipient, both selected by a member of our group. This month’s item was 2x4s and the recipient was a new homeowner, chosen by the lovely Amy from Home Remedies Rx make sure to stop by and give her a little Facebook love!
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And don’t forget to stop by and check out all of the other amazing projects! All of these ladies are so talented…our list of things we HAVE to make just keeps getting longer and longer…
So on to our project. Melinda and I have friends who just purchased their first house and I happened to be going to visit them to see it for the first time last weekend, so this project couldn’t have come at a better time. We both love using latitude and longitude as a way to personalize a gift so we had a 2×4 cut into three 12-inch pieces. Here’s a little tip, always check Home Depot’s scrap pile when you’re doing small projects like this. Melinda scored our 2×4 for $0.70!
We also purchased some Minwax stain in “Special Walnut” and a quart of Glidden “Matte White” paint. Then we headed back to Melinda’s to get to work. First we stained all three boards and let them dry for several hours.
Then I used our Silhouette Cameo to cut out the lettering/numbering for each board. I looked up the latitude and longitude using http://www.latlong.net/. Once I had them cut out I used transfer paper to transfer the vinyl lettering to the boards.
Then came the fun part. We haven’t done any painting over vinyl so Melinda and I were both really worried about how it would turn out. If we were lucky no paint would seep under the vinyl and we’d be left with wood stain colored wording on a white background…if we weren’t so lucky we’d resort to plan B…which we’d first have to come up with. I sponged several light coats of the paint on to help ensure that the paint wouldn’t seep under the edges of the vinyl. Then we held our breath and waited while the paint dried for about 15 minutes. The thin coats meant it dried fast I wanted to peel up the vinyl pieces while it was still damp so the paint wouldn’t chip.
The moment of truth came and as I peeled up the lettering ….it looked perfect! Don’t you love it when that happens?
We were originally going to paint all of the blocks but at the last minute we decided to only do the Welcome Home on a white background and leave the rest stained with white vinyl numbering. It gave a little more contrast and I love how it turned out!! We left the blocks separate instead of attaching them together because there are so many ways you can stack them
I took the gift with me when I went to visit my friends and our gift got to be the first thing added to the new house. It looks great on their mantle. They are so excited about their new home and I know they are going to love decorating it and making it their own.
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I love how this turned out! I never thought to check the scrap pile at Home Depot, good to know!
What a sweet idea! Great work. And, good tip on the scrap pile. 🙂
I love these blocks! Great idea and great tips!
Such a fun idea, ladies!! I love the idea of the coordinates, that’s a great gift for a new homeowner. I’m sure your friend will love it!
This is such a great gift idea for a new home owner! So meaningful and stylish too!! It turned out fabulous–love it!
I love how versatile these are!! I will definitely be making these for new home owners! Love the idea 🙂
Hi Kat! This is such a great gift idea for a new homeowner and it’s simple enough that anyone can make. Did I mention that I want one now too? Great job and welcome to the HD monthly challenge – great to have you!
Thanks Shelly we have loved working on all of the monthly projects so far. Looking forward to next month.
Love this personalization. It would be cute, too, as a housewarming gift idea.
What a lovely idea. This is a great gift for someone that “has it all”. Clearly they don’t have it all….yet!! Love it!
Thanks for linking up to Marvelous Monday on Smart Party Planning.
What a fun, personalized gift! I love the paint/stain combo you used, and the many different ways this can be arranged. Perfect!
What an amazing gift for a new home owner! So thoughtful and beautiful.
What a great idea! Great housewarming gift, but I kinda want to make one for ourselves (even though we’ve been in our house for 4+ years). Thanks for sharing!
You always share such creative projects…i never would have thought of this! Thanks for sharing with the Thursday Blog Hop!
Very cool project!
What an adorable sign! I can’t wait to get my cutting machine then I can make something like this. My hubby would totally geek out over the map coordinates.
This is definitely a man-approved project. My geek loved it too!
Super cute! Seriously so creative!! I totally need to look up our latitude and longitude now!! Perfect gift idea and I love the price!!
-Shonee
http://www.hawthorneandmain.com
I didn’t even know there was a scrap pile at the Home Depot – never even occurred to me to look!
Thanks for the great idea and for linking up at the Thank Goodness It’s Thursday party. I can’t wait to see what you link up tomorrow!
Such a great gift with the coordinates!! I’m a sucker for a stain and paint combo 🙂
Seriously fantastic project! It is the perfect Gramma Camp craft to do with my grand kids this summer. Thank you for sharing your brilliance with “owl” of us!
Hi there! What tool did you use to pull up the vinyl lettering?
Thanks!
Danielle
I used the Silhouette vinyl hook tool but if you don’t have one you could use tweezers.
Hi there, is there a way to cut out letters without the cutting machine? Maybe buying pre-cut letters from a art store? Would love to try this project!
You can try that or print out a template and hand paint them on too.