Goal of the Day: The yard sign!

  So, what's more fun than doing a projects for your own house? Doing them for someone else's! So, my parents have had a sign that has been in their front yard for years. It was a metal sign that had a bird bath and several birds perched on it and it had definitely seen some better days. I took it from their house back at Easter (I know that was a heck of a long time ago) and have spent some time here and there sanding off the rust, and fixing the metal to be one whole sign again and then I hit a wall. I didn't have any paints that worked on metal (and I knew I don't do many metal projects so...I wanted something that would work on other items too). Remember when I got really excited about the Martha Stewart new craft paints - this was why. So after the structural integrity of the sign was restored I primed it with the metal primer in the above mentioned Martha Stewart line. It went on nicely (a lot like Gesso (or a really thick acrylic if you haven't used Gesso), but did a great job covering all the metal work and sanding and previous paint to make a completely white 'canvas' to work on (see above picture). Then I set about painting the sign to be a fun little colorful display. (I wanted to add some little elements that would be entertaining for the grandkids (so I put in some fish (which I know would never survive in a bird bath without a water source...but hey, it looks cute), a snail, a monarch butterfly (mom's favorite) and a lady bug) then I did birds that are local to their house (and are colorful so that it would be entertaining to look at too). Check out the finished sign.

Cute right :)

To make it a bit more weather resistant I then sprayed it with two coats of the satin finish enamel spay (also from the Martha Stewart line. I really found the paint to work well, however a word of caution- because this paint works on all surfaces it is particularly unforgiving if you get it on anything. Turns out I had some wet paint on my hand when I sat on the couch and hit one of my new pillows. I got most of it out before it dried, but because it works on fabric...once it's dry. You've got a new color. Definitely put down the newspaper and wear painting togs with this stuff!