DIY 'Home Sweet Home' plaque

I love wood, it's just so much warmer than metal, modern furniture just wouldn't be for me I'm afraid. I've been wanting to make a nice wooden plaque with 'Home Sweet Home' written on it for a while now but you can't get nice plaques here so I decided to make it myself. It's not complicated you just need a few inexpensive tools:)

Supplies:
* hand saw
* miter box (there are some really cheap ones out there but of course Metal is best) this will help you cut at an angle
* wood glue
* piece of wood and enough molding to go around your wood
* straps to hold wood together while it dries
* wood filler
* paint
* words you want on your plaque printed on copier paper
* a pencil

1. Cut your molding (french: Moulures --leroy merlin a des bon prix) with your miter box to fit around your wood plaque.
2.Use your wood glue to glue the molding in place and hold it together with simple straps. By the way, you can only use wood glue if your wood still hasn't got any varnish or paint on it! Wood glue is very cheap, you dont need to get the expensive stuff, I bought mine at COOP Bau und Hobby in Switzerland for about 5 dollars. I let the longer sides dry longer than the shorter sides. and for the shorter sides I just held it together with my hands the first minute while they dried because my straps weren't long enough to go around the long side of my wood:)

3.You might have some spaces between the molding and your wood (especially in the corners), if that is the case this is where the wood paste or wood filler comes in handy. Sadly that is not very cheap and comes in a tiny tube. It is easy to use, just read the instructions on the back and start filling those holes!
4.Once that's done you are then ready to paint your wood. I'm having a brown phase by the way:)
5.I printed out my letters making sure they would fit nicely on my wood.
6.Then with the flat side of a pencil color the back side of your paper so it's nice and dark!
7.Then tape your words exactly where you want them, use a ruler if you have to because you wont be happy if your words are a bit crooked at the end! Then go over the outline of all the letters with a sharp pencil, a skewer might work too I think.
8. You can sort of see the word 'Home', I always go over all the letters with my pencil again because otherwise they tend to fade away after a bit, especially if you dont have time to paint it right away!
9.You're last step is to paint the inside of all the letters, this project took me about 90 minutes to paint, I usually let my husband choose a movie he wants to watch and I sit with him and paint:) You can either use a thin paintbrush (I have finally found a good one) but you can also use a toothpick or skewer. I've found that I can be more precise with a skewer than a brush but it also takes more time and concentration. In both cases your letters wont be perfect like when you're cutting out letters with your cutting machine but I like that it looks more hand made that way:)

Here are two other projects I did with the same word transfer system and painting! The first one is a gift I made for my dad for Christmas, it has his birth year as well as my moms, the year of their wedding and the year their kids were born. I left room for adding Grand kids at the bottom:)
Here's one I made for our hallway. The wood is actually a piece of fence for balconies that I found in France for less than 4 dollars (un morceau de balustrade)!