Creative Genius or Huge Waste of Time? Upcycled Home Decor DIY 🏠

Is this really a creative genius or an epic fail? Stick around to the end of this video and I'm gonna let you decide. My name is Lauren and I'm a craft producer here at Makers Gonna Learn and what we're gonna do today is we are going to take what other people deem trash and turn it into our own treasure. As you can see here, we have lots of different things on the table starting with this one. Did you know that this sign started off as this? And we turned it into this. I mean, come on. This is so stinking cute. Not only did we do that, but we found this in the clearance section of Hobby Lobby marked down to next to nothing. All we had to do was paint the front and add a little bit of vinyl and we made it perfect for a little kid's room. Next up over here, we got these two cute little signs, but they were both this pumpkin but we wanted to have a set because we wanted to put them together so we were able to paint over this pumpkin and then add a file that we have at Makers Gonna Learn and make a beautiful little set. So what we're going to do today is we're going to take this Dollar Tree cutting board, which is still not a bad looking cutting board, but it doesn't fit the vibe that we want. So I'm going to teach you exactly what to do to turn this into something that will fit you and your style. With all that being said, let's go ahead and go overhead and talk about the supplies you're going to need for all of this. So the first thing that you're going to need is some type of sign. Whether you get something from the Dollar Tree, you find something at a yard sale, the thrift store, in the clearance Hobby Lobby, it really doesn't matter. You just want to find something that has a really good base that you can customize to make your own. Next up, we are going to cover this with some chalk paint. Now we love the Starcraft chalk and mineral paint. We have both white and linen white. Honestly, this linen white is my dream cream color. I think it is absolutely beautiful. And I think this is the one that I'm going to use today, but we did use white in the other ones. So just know that there is white, but the linen white is the one we're going to be using today. Next up, we have some sandpaper. Now for those who are curious about sandpaper and the grit, think about it this way. The lower the grit, the coarser it is. So this is going to be 80 grit. This is going to be really good for sanding off like this black color you can see I've already started down here. It's smearing it a little bit, but I promise that's going to be okay. But we're just going to try our best to sand over this just a little bit to roughen this board up. So no matter what type of sign you do, I would highly suggest just giving it a light sand. If you don't have 80, 120 is a good grit to do this with as well. Just know that to take things off, you need a lower grit or 80 somewhere around in there. And then to finish, you want a higher grit, which is 240 or above. So you do need some type of sandpaper. We do have a paintbrush to paint our sign. And then I'm actually going to be putting sticker paper on this and I promise you're going to be blown away with how it looks. You can do however you want. If you want to do vinyl, you can do permanent vinyl, you could do HTV, you can do sticker paper, water slide. It is truly open to whatever you want to use, whatever type of material you have on hand. But this is what we're going to be using today. We love the Zicoto sticker paper in the mat. And like I said, I think you're going to be blown away by the results. Now that we've gone over all the supplies, let's go ahead and get started crafting. So the first thing that we're going to do is I'm actually going to take this decorative piece off up here because I do want to paint all of this and I don't want this in the way. So I'm just going to unravel this. I'm not going to take it off the back. It's actually glued on there. Um, yeah, I am going to take it off the back. I just popped that glue off and we'll just glue it back on there. Not a big problem. So you're going to take any decorative pieces off of your sign. Or your blank and then I'm just going to start sanding all over. Now you can see that this sign is really dirty after sanding. So after you sand, we're going to make sure we wipe it off really good because we don't want any of this these dust particles underneath our paint. And then we're also going to wipe our surface down. Now it's perfectly fine that there is still some black on this sign. I just wanted to lighten it a little bit and I want to just so I make sure that my paint covers it really really well. You may have to do a couple coats, but we'll see once we get there. I think this chalk and mineral paint will cover it with one coat. But we're just going to make sure that we get all the dust off before we start painting. Now that we have done that we are ready to start the painting process. So I can already tell that I am going to need to do two coats. When you are painting it's very important that you do it in thin layers. You do not want it super thick because what's going to happen is it's going to kind of get gunky. I don't know how else to say that other than it's going to be thick and not look as smooth. So you want to do it in thin coats and the good thing about chalk paint is chalk paint dries super super fast. So we can take a heat gun to this after we have put our first coat on and then we can quickly come back through and do a second coat after that. Another thing that really helps when you are painting is try your best to go one direction with your brush strokes. So right now we are going vertical which is up and down with our brush strokes and then our next coat we are going to go horizontal and that's just going to help cover and really get in that wood grain very well. So we are going to go up and down vertical first and then we are going to turn it and go horizontal on our next coat. So now that we have our first coat I am going to grab our heat gun which is a Wagner heat gun. We love this heat gun and I am just going to give this a good one over with the heat gun to make sure it is really good and dry. Now that that is really good and dry to the touch you can see that was not from that that was from earlier. We are going to now I'm just going to turn it this way and I'm going to start painting the opposite direction. Now the second coat I am laying on just a little bit thicker than that first but you still do not want your paint to be super thick. You still want it to be pretty thin but the second coat can be just a tad bit thicker than the first. Now that we have the second coat done I'm once again going to come in here with our heat gun and I'm just going to give it a good one over again. Now that it is dry to the touch again, I do still feel like we need one more coat for some reason I'm still seeing a little bit of that black through there. So I'm going to give it a third coat one more coat and we're going to see how it does and I'm turning it back around and we're going to do vertical for this last one. Now that we have our third coat I'm going to give it one more go over with our heat gun because we do need to paint the sides and then once I paint the sides, I'll set it to the side and we'll start on our design. So I'm just going to give it one more good go over with the heat gun. Now in case you all were wondering I am using this on the high setting but the key with using your heat gun is that you do not keep it in one area for a long time because that could burn your paint and you don't want to do that. So you just want to constantly keep it moving and with chalk paint when you look at it from the side you can actually watch it dry. So we're just going to continually move this around and just kind of look at the sheen of the paint from the side and that's really going to help you determine if it is dry. Now if you do see that your paint is starting to crack maybe you had a little bit too thick of a coat on it. I would bump it down to low and maybe just let it air dry if you do start to see your paint crack. So there are still a little a few semi-wet places there, but it's going to be okay. So I'm just going to flip this over and I'm going to start painting the sides. This is one thing you do not need to forget. Don't forget to paint the sides of your blank. Once you have painted the sides, I'm going to set this to the side and let this dry and then we are going to start designing what's going to go on our cutting board. So the first thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to measure how large my sign is. So I'm looking at it's a little bit more than seven and a half, but I think I'm just going to stick to seven and a half. By the highest I want to go is up to there, twelve and a half. So we're going to go into design space and I'm going to grab a shape just going to grab a square. I'm going to bring it over here. I'm going to unlock it and now I'm going to put those measurements in my width and my height. So I said I wanted my width to be seven and a half and my height to be twelve and a half. So what this is going to do is this is going to act like my cutting board. That way I can lay out and size everything that I want on it perfectly. So now that I have done that if you want to you can change the color to kind of match what you are working with. So we're doing like a cream so I can change it. Like you can see here I can change it to a cream color. Looks very close to what my color of my sign is. And now what I'm going to do is I'm going to hop over to Maker's Going to Learn and I'm going to grab a cut file that I want to go on this sign. So if you are a member you are going to have access to the exact cut files and fonts that we use today. But if you're not fun fact, you can become a member today for only a dollar. All you have to do click that first link down below. You can have a trial membership, which is going to give you unlimited access to our website. You're going to get 20 download credits meaning you could download 20 cut files or 20 fonts or a mixture of both. And this is going to last you for seven days. So you're going to be able to look around the website have unlimited access to our 30 Days to Master Your Cricut. Maybe you are a Cricut beginner and you want to know more. Our 30 Days to Master Your Cricut is an amazing way to do that. But with your dollar trial membership you can get access to that. Like I said plus 20 download credits. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to come over here to cut files. And then from there I'm going to search the one that I want and it actually says Happy Fall. I know we took this sign. It already said Hello Fall. But it wasn't I wanted it to be a little more broad. And this is the file that I want to use. I just think it's super super cute. So to download your files what you're going to do is you're going to press this arrow pointing down. It's then going to download up here in your downloads. You're going to double click that zip folder. And that's going to unzip that file. So once you have unzipped your file you're going to go back over to design space. We're going to come over here to the left hand side of the screen where it says upload. I'm going to click upload. We're going to upload image and then I'm just going to bring my finder back into view. And now I can drag and drop that file. Once I have done that we're going to go to continue. We don't need to take anything away from this file, so we're not going to really manipulate it. But I'm going to click apply and continue and then we're using this as a flat graphic today. So once you have done that we're going to click upload. And now it is going to upload to our canvas. So now what we can do is we can size this file to fit on our cutting board. Super super cute. Now if you want to you can center it. I really think I'm wanting it down toward the bottom. So I think I'm just going to do that. I think that is a perfect size. Now what I'm going to do is I'm either going to hide my square or you can get rid of it because like I said this is just acting as a placeholder for the blank that we are putting our file onto. So I'm just going to go ahead and delete it and come over here to make. Once we have done that I'm going to go to continue. I am going to send this to my printer. We are using a Canon TS9500 printer today. And for this one because I want the color to go all the way to the edge and I want to make sure that my machine has a little bit more room for error. I am turning on bleed. Now if you are working with something that has a white offset, you can actually turn that bleed off. But if you want something that has color all the way to the edges, make sure you always turn bleed on. The next thing that I'm going to do is I always use system dialog. So I'm going to turn on that use system dialog and hit print. Once I have done that nine times out of ten my dialog box pops up behind Cricut Design Space. So I have to pull Cricut Design Space down to find it. So you can see here I've pulled it down. You can even see with the words how it has added the bleed. That's perfectly fine. It's going to look like our original design once it's cut. So what I'm going to do is I like to feed from rear tray because sticker paper is a little thicker. So sometimes it won't feed through the bottom tray. So we always put ours in the rear tray. So feed from rear tray. I personally always change it to photo paper. Now I'm not using photo paper nor am I using glossy sticker paper. However, when you choose photo it tends to deposit more ink to give me a more richer color. So I like to turn it media type to photo and then I always no matter what I do your quality needs to go from normal to best every single time. Once you have done that we're going to click print. We're going to pull Design Space back up. You can verify this once it's done but I'm going to hop out here and grab my print and then we're going to send it through our Cricut to cut. Once your design has printed the cool thing with Cricut Design Space their new update is they have an arrow in the top left corner of all print and cut images. So if you have lots of things on here and you don't remember where certain things go it tells you which is the top left corner. So I do love that new update. So we're going to put that little arrow in the top left corner. I'm going to make sure I burnish it down on my mat really really well. And then after I have done that we're going to hop back over to Design Space. I am going to be doing this on printable sticker paper white green liner printing. What this is going to do is it's just going to cut your sticker paper. It's not going to cut through your backer. So we're just going to select that. After we have done that I'm going to come over here to my Cricut and we are going to load and start the print and cut process. Once it is done there is one thing that I do think everyone needs to get in the habit of doing and that is checking your cuts to make sure that it cut all the way through. I always do this to make sure I don't need to send it back through. It looks like it did beautiful so now I can go ahead and unload this. We're going to bring it over here. I'm going to leave this on the mat for the time being and I'm just going to take up the excess of this print and you can see how beautifully that cut on that sticker paper. Now there are some little pieces on the inside that we do need to get out of there. Now before I transfer this over to this board know that all and the H in happy is actually not going to be connected but that's okay. We can line it up and stick it down ourselves. Not a problem. So what I'm going to do I'm actually going to take this off and I'm going to start taking my sticker off of the page very carefully because there are lots of little pieces here. So we just want to make sure we do this very carefully and this part of the F. So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to bring my blank back over here and I am going to stick this down and then once we have our main part down I'm just going to come in here with the last part of the word fall and if you want to if you're confused as to where you want to put it what you can do you can revert back and you can look at your design here and I'm going to zoom in that way you can kind of see where it goes if that would help you and that way when you pull in your other letters we can use that as a guide to lay down our A and then finally our two L's and then last we have our H and if this is what if you like this you can be done. Now what I am going to do is I'm going to pull in my hot glue gun. I'm going to flip this guy back over. I'm going to add a little bit of hot glue right there where that other glue was and we're just going to glue this back down and then once you have done that we can now turn it back over and re-wrap the jute back on the front. Really no necessary not necessarily there's no rhyme or reason per se on how you can or can't do this so I'm just going to give it a good little tie and now you have repurposed something that was going to go in the trash and made it something that fits you and your style. Now if you want to seal this you can give this a seal. If you want to do it with some Krylon clear coat mat you can give it a good spray and seal this. Makers Magic is also a really good sealant would seal this in but in all honesty for a three dollar blank I probably would just use this in my home as a seasonal piece of decor. I personally wouldn't seal it but just know that there are options for you. So what do you think? Is this craft genius or an epic fail? You tell me. Make sure you leave a comment down below. Now if you want to recreate something like this using the files that we have once again make sure you click that first link down below. Take advantage of that dollar deal because y'all it is insane the amount of things that you get for one dollar. With your 20 download credits that brings it down to five cents a download. Tell me where you can find a full font for five cents. As always if you like this video make sure you hit the thumbs up, subscribe to our channel and hit that bell notification so that you can be notified every time we get crafty.