Shabby Geek

Since I suck at keeping up with this on a scheduled basis, I again have changed my mind about what I will be doing: I'm going to type up and post as I complete items on my 23 by 24 goal list. Now, if I'm really on top of things that will be at least 1 post per week for the goal #6: Create something at least once per week. Well, it just so happens I have two posts worth of things to chat about so here goes.

I have recently decided to quit denying my love of things that some may view as odd and embrace geekdom. With that in mind, I've also been considering how to turn my home into a mash up of my love of the old and vintage with my love of video games and various fandoms. I took the plunge today and created a sign for our entryway.

I started with some Pinterest - inspiration:

 

For those who don't know, the hearth stone (on the right) is from the game World of Warcraft. When activated, the hearth stone returns you "home" (being where ever you set it to be).

Materials and supplies:

• Wood
• Paint and/or crayons
• Paint brush(s)
• pencil and paper or stencil
• hardware to hold it all together and hang

Price: If you already have all the supplies/ ask around to borrow or recycle this is has the potential to be free
Time: Approx. 4 hours (including time for paint to dry)

For this project, I already had all the supplies so price for this was free. I suggest before going out to buy wood (which is fairly cheap as is), you should check out Craigslist. I am always seeing people with posts for free scrap or fire woo. For me, the boards I used actually started out as the foot board to my bed (check out that here), then were re-purposed into a dog bed, and were then just hanging out in the craft closet. I cut down 3 boards to be stacked on top of one another and attached them to another piece of scrap wood. Its fairly easy so I will just direct you to the inspiration tutorial (click on the image above).

After assembling the boards, I created a sort of stencil using word. If you already have a stencil, great! you can skip this paragraph. If not, simply type the letters up as needed in the font you want (I downloaded a WoW font for "HOME" and used the typewriter font for the rest). Obviously you don't have to print every letter so for just type up the letters "HOMEiswhert". The way the sizing worked was HO and ME each had their own page and the rest of the letters fit on a single page. Now cut out your letters.

If you look close enough you can see the pencil tracing I completed for the 'E'

Lay your letters out on your boards and rearrange as you see fit. I definitely suggest taking your time to make sure you have it just the way you want it. If you're using a stencil you can paint right over the top, keeping the stencil in place with tape. If you're using letters printed and cut out like me, I suggest tracing and then going back in with paint. 

Maybe you can tell or maybe not but the hearth stone grey/white color is actually from crayon because I didn't have the right color for it but I think it turned out quite nicely. If you don't have paint, before you run out to your nearest craft store, try some different mediums on the back of your boards to see how that might look. In all honesty, I didn't intend for the colors to be so similar to my original inspiration. We have a lot of blue in our house and we've been trying to lighten it up with spots of orange and red so the "home" was supposed to be more orange but it dried quite yellow. Anyway, let your master piece dry for at least an hour, hang with sturdy hooks and you're done. Now time to admire your work!

Also on the entry wall is a window from the house I grew up in and lots of fun knobs that my mom sent me. We hang our bags on the ones with heavy metal plates and our keys and dog leashes on the small ones.

There you have it, my first plunge into... shabby geek? Sure, we'll go with that - a mash up of shabby chic and geekdom. One more thing to check off my 23 by 24 list.

I will be posting another goal I completed in the next few days so tune back in for that. Until then, live long and prosper!