the rest of plywood crafting.

So there was lots of plywood crafting to be done this Christmas season but it is now complete. Mostly plywood signs about mountains. Pretty much entirely plywood signs about mountains.

Including (but not limited to) - peeling off more paper label letters to complete the aforementioned (in the previous post) sign -

And finished!

To making J's Christmas present -

To a different idea... calling up the help of some coworkers at the printshop (my old stomping grounds) to fire up the big ol' flatbed printer and test printing on plywood some designs I threw together. I had quickly primed the wood the night before (though the printer has a white ink cartridge it didn't really work very well in our first round of testing - so I opted to just paint the wood white).

They came out looking (dare I say) pretty darn cool...

(that one of Mount Baker is about 20x30"... )

I quick applied a clear finish to them, drilled the backs and... finished! Trouble is I want to make more... luckily I have another four-foot square sheet of crap plywood ready to be cut to whatever size(s) necessary!

plywood crafting.

When Jeff and I were on our annual autumn holiday - this year visiting Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks (luckily just days before the bleeping shutdown) - I made him stop at a kitchy corner gift shop in Jackson cos I noticed a really really awesome sign hanging in the window. Jeff didn't bother himself with actually accompanying me inside (I think sometimes it's cool to be a kitchy tourist!) so I went in alone to check it out. It was made out of plywood and plastered with an infamous Muir quote ~

'The mountains are calling and I must go'

There was another - even bigger - sign that said even more simply ~

'Go climb a mountain'

I had to have them. Trouble was - they'd be hard to fit in my carryon luggage. And they were kind of stupid-tourist expensive. So I told myself - 'I can make that!'

Time then to put that theory to the test... It started with buying some cheap CDX plywood and designing a file to size.

Then printing out a set of the letters - as many as could fit on each letter-sized piece of stick-on label paper I had. That was the easy part. Then came the painstaking cutting out part. Of every letter. Which actually wasn't too bad - especially with help!

Then sticking them on - using guides in the design layout and a T-square on the plywood to measure the leading and kerning.

Until it was finished...

Wait... obviously I had painted the plywood white before I began. So then it was time to paint over the letters.

And... the real painstaking part. No... the really painstaking part. Peeling them off. Every. Single. Letter. Oh and the teeny-tiny hyphen. Stupid hyphen.

My fail was that I used regular old Avery label paper (8-1/2x11" sheets granted) cos I had some lying around - but which do not take to being painted over very kindly. And so it was nearly impossible to get them off. Before I make more of these kinds of plywood signs I need to invest in some proper vinyl sticker sheets. But regardless - a couple hours later it was actually finished -

And looks pretty cool I must admit. I have to saw off an inch from the bottom (for some reason I cut it at 16-1/2" instead of 15-1/2" cos clearly I have yet to learn the ol' adage 'measure twice cut once' rule from grade school carpentry... ).

But once I master that - up next...

: )