Where's the Fire?!

As promised yesterday I have some pictures to share with you on the sign project we are working on.  First up...the awesome tree branch we found to use as the post.

It doesnt look like much here but it has great character that will help with the "vintage" feel of the sign.  In the background you can see the first branch we picked, but I didnt love it so thanks to Mom for having dead trees on the property that we can use as projects.  For those of you playing along at home...so far the total cost for this project is $0.

Now on to the signs themselves.  Joe did a great job making fancy arrows, I told him he didnt have to for all of them so here is the mix of what he made for me.

Pretty cool right?!  Most of these stakes came from this pallet...we love using pallets because hello they are free!  Add that $0 to the current $0 and we are at a running total of $0...not too shabby right.  And we still have wood left on that pallet so who wants to suggest another pallet project?!

A close up on the arrows for you, I found all the fonts online at free font websites.  I thought it added more character to the arrows having different fonts that reminded me of the place they were taking you to.  I have about 5 different Harry Potter fonts right now, but you know I had to use the classic HP for Diagon Alley!

Like I mentioned yesterday, we were going to try and burn an arrow rather than paint them.  Adventurland was my tester (and yes I know adventureland is one word, however my husband apparently does not).  Here is the stake with the outline of the words drawn.  Joe went over that with his soldering gun, its pretty cool and has about 100 different attachments you can use on it, one of which was a little tiny saw that was great for carving out the wood.

After he did that, he poured gas on it and set it on fire...it didnt turn out so bad, but not really usable so we were back at square one.

Joe decided to get a heavy duty wood burning soldering gun, which is great for large projects but not so great for the detail work.  So thats where the wood burning capability on the smaller soldering gun came in handy.  One thing to note, our soldering gun is powered by butane which is great, but once the gun hits the wood it cools almost instantly.  For this particular project it would have been better if it was an electric soldering gun then the gun would have stayed hot the whole time.

Thats where we are on the sign project, making the rest of the arrows is just going to take some time since all the details I put in are a little intricate but hopefully we will get to put the sign in the ground this weekend!  More to come as it comes :)

Project Housewife Out!