DIY Coffee Sign

So if you’ve hung around with me here on the blog before you know I like LOVE coffee. Love isn’t really a strong enough word to express my adoration for coffee; it’s like a warm, cuddly hug in a mug. And that’s just how this coffee sign idea came to me; while drinking a cup of coffee and trying to put into words how I feel about my bev of choice.

I received a generous gift from Cricut of their Explore Air machine and this coffee sign was my first foray in playing with my new big girl toy. I loooove it! I was a little nervous trying it for the first time since I’d only ever used another brand of cutting machine, but it was so easy. The Cricut has settings right on the machine that adjust the cutting blade (rather than having to switch the blade out with each material change), the auto-loader is no-fuss and requires no guiding or adjusting rollers. Clearly I’ve been missing out.

In addition to all of the other excellent features, it can write and looks like real handwriting with many of the fonts. This is a choir singing moment for me. If you’ve ever seen my handwriting you know why. Let’s just say you’re lucky that blogs are typed and not handwritten or you would already have a headache right now trying to decipher my chicken scratch. Or more likely, you would have just stopped reading and then you wouldn’t get to see how to make your own coffee sign!

Coffee Sign Supplies:

Cricut Explore Air™
Wood sign (I bought the sign at a thrift store; it’s 6 ¾” square)
Cricut Gold Adhesive Foil
Cricut tools

Directions:

Start with a wood sign; if it has a design on it like mine did you can paint over it with a matte acrylic paint. I chose white because it matches my kitchen and is a nice contrast with the gold foil.

Create the sign lettering in the Cricut design space. You can use either Cricut’s fonts or fonts from your computer. The font I used is called Pea Deigh which was a free download to my computer. My “COFFEE” lettering is about 5½” wide for perspective; you can adjust accordingly based on the size of your sign. I recommend printing before cutting to assess size and layout of the letters comparable to your sign (you can print directly from the machine).

Cut off the amount of gold foil you will need from the roll and place on the adhesive mat, foil side up.  Smooth out any lumps with the scraper tool.

If the material you’re using isn’t on the machine’s dial (which in this case, it isn’t) then turn the dial to custom. The design space has a drop down menu to select the material you’re using (for this project, adhesive foil). Load cutting mat into the machine by inserting it into the guides and pressing the double arrow sign.

When cutting is complete, unload by pressing the double arrow button. Gently pull the foil off of the mat.

Using the Cricut tweezers, carefully remove the letters from the backing.

Hold each letter with the tweezers to place the letters precisely on the sign (again, assess the layout for the letters before applying, this will save you a lot of time in repositioning!)

After I was done I decided I wanted to underline “coffee” so I drew a line underneath with a gold sharpie (the Cricut could have drawn it for me if I had decided this beforehand).

And that’s it!

I’m loving my coffee sign displayed by my coffee station; it makes me smile when I go to make my daily cup of java!

So tell me, have you used a Cricut machine before? What is your favorite project you’ve done? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below or see them on my Facebook page!

I hope you’re having a great hump day and that you get a big hug today (in or out of a mug 😉 ).