 This week's project was inspired by a viewer comment. Yes Liz asked about our bust up here. What is it? It's a fox. And we love foxes. Fantastic Mr. Fox is our favorite movie. So this week's quote on our sign comes from my favorite movie. So we had to make a giant 6 foot wide 18 inch tall fantastic farmhouse sign. And it was super easy. And we'll show you how we did it right now. What is up? Welcome back. This week we're trying to build the easiest, giantest farmhouse sign ever with the least amount of tools we can do. Really the biggest tool will be our Cricut because we are going to make a stencil and we do need the Cricut. That's the biggest tool but otherwise like a little hand saw, little mail gun. Done. No big cuts but we are making a giant sign. Kim wanted the sign to be taller than her. Yes I saw these signs on Pinterest. I mean I've made a few signs but none that are 6 feet tall. So it is going to go horizontal not vertical like this but I did want it really long. Step one, we're going to gather all of our supplies. And that supply list is really short. It's really just a 6 foot long 16 inch project board. And then 3 6 foot 1 by 2's. And some Cricut vinyl. And some Cricut vinyl. And you know I get a lot of questions about the role of Cricut vinyl that we have in our list of supplies. This role, it's getting a little bit small now but it started out as 100 feet. I think it was less than $50 right at $50. And it has lasted, this is year 2. We're in the second year now right? Next month. February is 2 years and it is still going so it's totally worth the money. I can't tell you how many stencils, stencils, stencils, vinyl projects we've made with this stuff. Well if you've seen our projects, you see how many stencils we use. We used it for the wood burning, for the painting. I guess that's really it. Well and sometimes we use it for our actual projects. Yeah. You know, when you adhere the vinyl to something. This is Oracal 631 not 651, 651 is that permanent. This is the repositionable 631 and I think this works well for stencils. Step 2. Now we're going to make all of our cuts, both of our cuts. We're only making two cuts. We're going to take this one, one by two and cut two pieces at 17 and a half. So before we do that, I just wanted to show you what makes this so easy is that these boards are purchased at 6 feet just like the backer board. So the frame is the same size as the backer. All we need to cut is two 17 and a half inch pieces for the ends. So easy. We're going to stain and paint. First try, good job. We're going to stain these one by twos. This Jacobean, Jacobean. Somebody who's nice enough to correct our pronunciation of the name of the stain. We were calling it Jacobean. Look like Jacobean, but it's Jacobean. Potato, potato. Step 3. We're going to paint the backer. We're going to paint that project board now. And we're going to paint it with chalk paint with a chalky smooth finish black. We're going in black. And we're going to rock paper scissors to see who has to paint this thing. He's only wanting to do rock paper scissors because I lose every time. Alright, ready? Rock paper scissors shoot. Rock paper scissors shoot. Oh, I'm painting. That's because we did it on film. Stencil. Well, all this stuff is drying. So let's jump into design space and I'll show you how I did it. Okay, real quick. We're going to upload our SVG file. Garrett made this one for us. Insert your image. Comes in grouped. Really long. 68 inches up here. And that's too long to print. So what we're going to do is ungroup this. Fantastic is 45 inches that will not fit on a 24 inch mat. So the way you break that down is to slice it. So we're going to insert an image. Going to put this square over the item that you want to slice. And while the squares highlighted, hold down your shift key. Select your second image. Both are selected now. Click slice. Now you'll remove the parts and delete the parts of the square. And now you have a slice of your image. That's it. So for those of you that are new to Cricut, I am using a pink mat. It's a fabric mat, but it's the only clean 24 inch mat that I have. So that's the one we're going with today. My other tip here is the best way to put on vinyl onto a mat is to hold it from end to end like this and line up the side. And then once you do that, you can lay the whole thing down and it does not come out crooked. Works perfectly. Step five, we're going to add the graphic. But first we have to weed our stencil and put some transfer tape on it to the weeding. Okay, so the trickiest part about creating this stencil is getting it positioned correctly on the board. So we've brainstormed what we think is the best way. So we've put fantastic on its own stencil by itself, its own three pieces of vinyl. And then the words, we've put them on their own stencil as well. So what we'll do is cut out three strips that are the same. What would you say? Height? Height. Same height so that we can get the correct spacing. So let's start with cutting our letters out and then we'll show you the next step. Get this out of the way. Now, if you do not have, let me show them this craft mat. This craft mat is a lifesaver. If you do not have one of these, you totally need to get one of these. It's self-healing so we can cut right on it. And it's nice and long so you can use the grid marks on this mat for your ruler, which Garrett's not doing. Yeah, no. I marked it on the actual stencil. All right. All right, we have our letters cut. The other thing we use all the time, I just bought it because it was on sale and I thought it was pretty cool, but we do find ourselves using it all the time. It's this Cricut ruler. It is 18 inches and it has a nice sharp edge and a little lip that you can hold on to. It's not a lip you can hold on to. That lip is to protect your thumb. I cut my thumb so many times with regular... With regular... What is this thing? Ruler. With regular rulers, I really learned that that is a thumb saver right there. Not a grip thumb saver. There's a big scar on my thumb from messing around in art class without one of these rulers like that. Well, and I only mention it because I happened to be on... I think it was the Cricut Craft Life Facebook group and somebody was asking, is this ruler worth it? Yes. And yes, I told them yes and I just thought I'd share with you guys. Yes. You've ever hopped your ruler with your X-Acto knife? You know it's worth it. Oh, you want to apply the transfer clear first? Well, let's... Do you want to cut this one? Okay, so the thing about this stencil is we thought we were all slick and we said, okay, we'll put everything aligned to a quarter inch from the bottom and cut it, except that the S goes lower than the bottom so that automatically puts this one up high. The F goes lower than the bottom of the word so that put it up high. So now we have to even out our stencils and kind of cut this fantastic and make it nice and straight across. Fantastic. All right, we've centered it so now let's get these out the way. We're going to add fantastic first. Before we lay down any paint, we're going to lay down some Mod Podge to seal it so we get less bleeding. All right, our Mod Podge is dry so we're going to use some of this white chalk paint. Maybe. I can't get the lid off of. Time to peel it up. Let's see what we got. Let's see what we got. There's our fantastic. Looks good. Nice, crisp lines. Yeah, it looks fantastic. It does, it does. All right, let's add these ginghamers. Step six. Put those one by twos on as a frame. We're just going to tack them on with a one inch, one and a quarter inch bread. The nail, not the guy. A giant farmhouse sign. That's it. Pretty easy, huh? I think the stencil was the hardest part. We made a giant sign. Are you going to make a giant sign? What's it going to say? Where are you going to put it? We have to find a place for this thing. If you like this video, hit that like button. If you're not yet subscribed, hit that subscribe button. And it'd be fantastic if you hit that bell so you can be notified every week of our new videos. Until then, watch something over here.