Ruth 1:16 Sign

Hi There,

I may have mentioned before that my husband is in the Army and we move a lot.  Some of those moves come with excitement about the new station and all that is in store, but others not so much.  Some were looked forward to with dread.  One such place was Ft Polk, LA.  My heart sank when I learned that we were being sent there.  It seemed like it may as well have been on the other side of the Earth.  It was far from home and there were alligators.  Turns out I had nothing to fear.  Aside from the summers that felt like living on Mercury I ended up loving it there.  We lived off base and got to know the people, who turned out to be my main form of support when my husband was deployed.  One of those people got me connected with an awesome church that I still miss.  And maybe not most important, but way up there on the scale, is my discovery of deep fried pickles.

With all our moves, whether looked forward to or not, one thing remains the same, we are a family and and wherever we go, we will go together.

Throughout all our moves one verse from the Holy Bible runs over and over in my mind, Ruth 1:16  “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay.”  It definitely fits our nomadic life.

After about two years of thinking about it I finally made it into a sign.

Here’s how it all went down.

I bought a piece of 2′ x 4′ plywood from Lowe’s.  It’s a 1/4 inch thick.  Little Bit helped me stain it Old American by Minwax.  The stain came first so that it could be distressed a little and the wood wouldn’t be the original light birch color.  After it was dry I painted two coats of Swiss Coffee from Behr.

Next came figuring out how I wanted it to look.  I found a font I liked and printed it out.  Now if you are a little more computer savvy than I am you can print out your text in a large font and save a lot of time.  But seeing that I am barely able to figure out this blog stuff I had to do it the hard way.  I rolled out a section of banner paper the size of my board and hand wrote the verse onto it with a grid system.  One inch on the printed paper for every six inches on my board.

Once it was all written out I taped carbon paper to the back.  I’ve done the whole scribble with a pencil technique a few too many times.  I found that loading the kids up and going to the office supply store for this one item was totally worth it.

After taping the paper to my board and tracing the letters it was time to paint.  I painted the big “&” symbol first as it was to be behind the words.  Then using a Sharpie paint pen I filled in the lines.

Here it is all painted.

And here it is after a little distressing.

Last step was building the frame.  I used prime 1×2 pine.   Using the table saw I cut out a groove.  It took multiple passes to get it wide enough for the board to fit in.  Then once all the side were cut to length they all got glued and the ends got shot with a couple brads from the nailer.

And there you have it.  A new sign.  This one is going over my bed.  The master bedroom is slowly being cobbled together but I see the end in sight.  I’ll let you know when it’s done.

Do you have a verse or phrase that has special meaning to you?  I’d like to hear what you would put on a sign.

And if you are ever in Leesville, LA and in need of a great church look up Family Worship Center.  The people there will make you feel like family and will give you a reason to want to stay.