Craft Project – National Park Sign

You may have walked by park signs many times.

Their unique look was designed to blend in with the natural beauty of the surroundings rather than compete with it.

Use the following instructions and the video to construct a similar one!

Instructions (see video for details/example)

What You Will Need

Materials

  • Wood boards (we cut pallet wood down to 7″ x 2″ size)
  • Router letter templates (or paper transfer method)
  • Router tool
  • Drill with bits
  • Saw
  • Paints and brushes
  • Mod Podge (if transferring text to wood)

Project Directions

For the cleanest letters, use router templates.
(We didn’t have the letter templates to guide our router)
Look for state park font letters.

or

Transfer ink text to the wood.
(In our case, it was less pricey, but it involved a little more work)

First, we typed our text using the National Park typeface, making sure it was big, bold, and colored black.

Then we mirrored the text.

We printed from a laserjet printer.
(If you try this ink transfer method from an inkjet printer, look for instructions online.)

Brush a healthy coat of Mod Podge onto the wood.

Align the text printout face down and press it onto the treated area, rubbing it flat.

Let it dry for 12 hours so the ink dries to the Mod Podge.

After 12 hours, take a damp towel and gently wet the paper.

Rub the paper off the wood to reveal the ink.

We drilled shallow holes at the corners of our letters using a bit that matched the width of the letter stroke.
The holes are start and end points for each router pass.

Use a router bit the same width as the drill bit, and carve out each letter steadily and carefully.
A “V-shaped” bit would be best.
We cut at about a quarter-inch depth.

We cut the corners off the sign to achieve a beveled look.

After sanding the boards completely, we added two coats of brown paint.

Then we used a small brush to paint the letters yellow.
Take care around the edges, but you can use a flat brush and go over with brown again.

NOTES

The sign we made is a prop for a Cadet theme video.
You can choose to post your sign at club meetings, club events, or at your campsite.
Some park signs even include pictures. If a cadet wants to try routing an image onto his sign, the picture should be printed backwards before being transferred to the wood, just like the text in this video.

If you have any questions or comments about this video, please send them to info@calvinistcadets.org.