Inspiration in the form of a wooden board

While eating breakfast this morning, I looked out the window and saw this board on my back porch. It isn't unusual for me to see random pieces of wood on the porch - when my parents moved they left us a bunch of wood to be burned in the fire pit, and Paul likes to haul it out to build bridges. What is unusual is for me to be inspired by said wood. And, that is what happened this morning. I'm not sure why, but some days are just more inspirational than others.

So, with an idea in mind, I set to work. I measured and found the board to be 2.5" wide and 0.75" wide. I pulled out my handy-dandy saw and started cutting.

The idea was to cut them into squares, and that worked, for the most part. So, now I had a bunch of 2.5"x2.5" squares.

Next comes paint. Lucky me, I had a bunch of black left from Halloween. A few coats, and all my squares were black.

And, this is the part where I forgot to document steps. I recently made labels for my dry goods containers on the counter, and I really liked the font. This font was perfect for my inspiration, so I pulled my spandy new Silhouette out and got to cutting. Since my blocks were 2.5" squares, I cut the font about 2.25" tall. Then, I painted a layer of Mod Podge on each square. On to each square I stuck a letter. And ended up with "LAUGH" and "LOVE". Add another layer of Mod Podge, and now my blocks are shiny as well as black with letters. Almost there, I thanked my lucky stars that I picked up eye hooks at Home Depot this morning. So, in the top and bottom of each block I screwed in an eye hook. Whew! Now a picture.

With the hooks in, all that was left was to attach the letters to each other. I bent the bottom hook out -

and slid the following letter on.

I repeated this process until I got the whole word together. And hung.

With "LOVE" I decided to hang them staggered. Due to their location, I couldn't get a good picture front on. They are really more even than they look. I promise.

I still haven't figured out exactly how to hang them. I mean, they are on the wall, but they need something more. Anyway. My favorite part of this project was the price. $2. Really. I bought the eye hooks for $2 this morning, but that was all I had to buy. The wood was scrap, the spray paint left over from Halloween, and the paper some of my stock on hand. Yeah! (One day I will have to learn to take pictures well so that you can really see how cute these babies are!)