 We get a lot of questions about our front porch welcome signs How do you do it? How'd you do it with the wood? How'd you do it with the vinyl? Well, we're gonna show you our three favorite methods for making our front porch welcome signs And we'll show you how we do it right now. Oh my god What is up a welcome back do like to do it build it or make it We do too and we do it every week This week we're making three versions of a front porch welcome sign with a little independent flavor Little fourth of July and we're gonna use three methods. We're gonna go awesome better and best We're going cricket cheap five dollar version Then we're gonna go X carve With like a wider version Like using three pickets wide And in the last one, we're gonna try a one by 12 and using our glow forge Sign number one the one we're doing with the cricket five dollars. We needed one gothic picket With pointy top feels like a dollar forty two and we needed to a dog-eared pickets. These were like a dollar seventy two I'm not good at math, but that's like five bucks each We're just gonna chop down this gothic picket we're gonna get two pieces at eleven and a quarter Don't you want to make sure you're just gonna you bury chest of it Eleven and a quarter Now if you don't have a pocket saw you can always use the one at the Hovering Crimin store over in the trim area It'll take a little bit elbow grease, but it works Time for some gorilla glue We're not even gonna nail it. We're just gonna use this gorilla glue a little bit of little gorilla glue a little bit of time Bond it right together just like nails. We're going three and a half inches from the top and Two and a half inches from the bottom Don't go too heavy because this stuff gets puffy Now we're just gonna clamp it down two hours We'll wait remember how I said it gets all puffy You see that you see that right there that puff We'll puff see we'll puff on the back to my face getting real close to Kim's face Sorry, babe. I didn't see you there So we just use this little teeny spatula it chips right off and done so it was never there Now we're gonna paint we're gonna use this white bear chalk paint Just give it a coat give it a coat Yes, so this bear chalk paint comes from Home Depot And the great thing about this is if you want chalk paint in a larger quantity You can get it in this quart size mixed in any color that you want So we just got one of these mixed up in white because we use white chalk paint all the time a lot of it Yes, so home Depot Not a sponsor no, but hit me up home Depot, but you should be All right, I don't even need to quit We just want a good coat on Yes, lots of times most of the time we stain these but with this one We're gonna do the red white and blue Independence Day theme so we're gonna start with a white base. I wanted to mention the sanding So a lot of people ask questions around whether or not we sand these boards Sometimes we do and sometimes we don't sometimes They're already they're always pressure treated, but they're super smooth and nice and all you have to do is stain it or paint it But sometimes like these boards they were very rough very rough So we did a quick sand smooth it out a little it's still pretty rough. So it doesn't have to be perfect It's gonna be a front porch sign But we just sanded them a little so the paint goes on easier and it doesn't like tear up your brushes And you'll get a better seal on your stencil with your Mod Podge It won't be so rough. So you won't get any paint that slips underneath that stencil Next step create our stencil using our Cricut. I Created an SVG actually Garrett created it for me in Adobe Photoshop or illustrator illustrator illustrator and so I just imported that SVG into design space and then I Ungrouped all of the letters and stars and then grouped what would fit on a 24 inch mat So some of them are 22 some of them are 19 and I think one of them is 24 or something like that So I just kind of grouped what would fit on the mats that we have and then I have three stencils Now we have all of our stencils cut and transfer tape applied Okay, so now we have the transfer tape on top and we'll start peeling off the back of our stencil leaving the adhesive part exposed Remember keep it tight. You need a tight peel You want to keep it folded? Folded tight enough so that the vinyl doesn't want to come with the backing This stuff is also really great for reuse the transfer tape. You can save it and use it again Again So I know you guys have heard us say this a hundred times now, but the number one trick with Stencils on this rough wood is to Mod Podge the stencil first Now I've had a couple of people say that the Mod Podge Didn't work so great for them and I'm not really sure if They're adding too much Mod Podge And it's getting too wet. It's just a thin coat. Yes, just a thin coat You just want to get it right up against that vinyl And let it dry just a little bit so it creates a barrier for the paint Oh Yeah, I hope we have enough paint. All right, let's give you a brush before it dries. Are you serious? I'm doing blue. America's in blue. Okay Well, yes, I'll do bless in red and then we'll do God in blue given that There's a lot of blue down here already. Yeah, that was not the original plan. Just saying it Where's my mock-up over here that I drew up? Oh, no, we mocked it up. That was blue. So lucky for you. All right so We have a surprise for you guys at the end Gonna be a good surprise We'll show you at the end We're gonna remove the stencil now The paint isn't completely dry, but it's almost dry the tricky part here is Not touching the white again. Yes, don't let your stencil touch the white You know what paint everywhere. It looks pretty good. Oh, except for one thing. We'll show you guys Did you notice it? You have to you have to guess what it is. We'll show you at the end Sign number two We just need four of the gothic pickets and they're $1.42 each Again, I'm no mathematician, but that's like five dollars and sixty-eight cents Just so you know, he just asked Alexa before we hit record $1.42 So we're just gonna cut one of these down We need two sections. That's 12 inches Three of these all together are 12 inches And then we're gonna trim three of them down to 67 inches It's just past the curve Now we're just gonna glue down These 12 inch little pieces to the backs of the board And then tack them down with a three-quarter inch bread You could use the gorilla glue like we did on the last project But this one you won't have to wait for the glue to dry The nail not the guy. Oh, I'm sorry. I ruined your job We're going to paint them red white and red And we're going to put blue at the top, but I was going to paint them before we assembled them So we were overzealous. So now it's going to be a little tricky It paint looks great. It does. It really is pretty and love it. Now we need some letters So I'm going to take this quarter inch sheet of mdf Two foot by two foot down to the cnc machine and I'm going to carve out our letters and some stars I'm back with our little mdf letters. They look so cute I'm going to take these out and spray paint them black I am not going to try to get the paintbrush and each of these little nooks and crannies Yeah, that's what I was just going to say. So to make the paint job a little easier He's going to spray paint them. All right. We're back. We got our letters all painted Our stars are all painted Looking a little shiny It's okay. I told him we weren't painting a car It should have been some sort of spray chalk paint He's got the high shine lacquer finish on these Yeah, I wanted him to pop I mean, where's the bling? Right, okay All right. So now we're going to glue them down and then pin them with a five eighths inch Brad the nail not the guy Looking good Sign number two sign number three This one is probably the most expensive because the one by 12 that we're using Is like 17 dollars for an eight foot board That's the most expensive backing that we've used. Yes And we're using the glow forge. That's an expensive piece of equipment and we're using some one eighth inch mdf But this one should be the coolest. I'm hoping This one is the coolest. It should be have the most detail to it The most pop So, uh, we'll see first thing we're going to do is Paint this thing red We already had this piece of scrap. So we didn't have to We didn't have to we didn't have to We already had this piece of scrap so we didn't have to go off and spend 17 dollars, but uh Just so you know, it's cheaper with the pickets. Yes, it is I almost chose to just do this one with the pickets, but since we had this board And given the design that we're going to use we just decided to go with it And we're just coming in with the same red paint. So my pools of paint are drying I'm going to take this mdf outside and I'm going to spray paint this white I'm going to let these dry nice and dry. I'm going to add some blue masking tape to them I can't let the masking tape overlap. Otherwise the laser won't cut all the way through. That's how sensitive it is I'm going to throw it in the glow forge and I'm going to cut it out. All right. Everything's back from the glow forge Everything's painted. Remember, it's all painted underneath here. We're just going to glue it to the board All right, we have all the little painters tape off. It's all laid out It's already popping But now we're going to lay it down permanently with some of this clear This says leave it for two hours to cure In like 24 hours for a total cure But uh, what you think? Three of them Do you guys notice what was wrong with this one right here the cricket one? Huh, did you notice? Did you notice? Yeah Leave us a comment down below if you figured out what it was So which was your favorite? the cricket The x carve the 3d letters the mdf Or the glow forge. Oh, look at that glow forge. I bet you guys can guess which one's mine We're going to put this svg up in our store and we're going to include the unfinished kits for the welcome letters And uh, this 4th of july cut out Remember to join us on patreon for any extra content like outtakes like Somebody's blue paint might have exploded These guys right here get to see all that kind of stuff and we'll see you next week where you and I will do it Build it or make it again