Is anyone else fascinated with vintage store signs and hand painted lettering on windows? I’ve always loved the attention to detail and fancy scroll work of vintage sign painting. I even did my graduate thesis on the importance of historic sign techniques. I know, I’m that kind of architecture nerd.
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Well that passion for hand painted lettering was renewed when I saw a few artists on instagram achieving the same look, but with vinyl! And suddenly an idea was born…one large mirror hanging out in storage at my client’s house was about to get a fabulous makeover!
I first started my ordering my rolls of vinyl online and picking out a fun phrase that would fill the frame. I went with a simple scheme of gold and white so the different fonts could stand out. Once I found my phrase “I’ve got 99 problems, but not giving a sparkly fuck solves 97.6 of them” (sorry mom for the cursing), I got to work on laying out the design in my Silhouette cutting program.
The key to achieving a vintage hand lettering look is to pick various intricate fonts and mix it in with fonts with bold, clean lines. I played around with curving some of the words, add flourishes, and varying sizes. Once I had my design, I sized the entire piece to fit the mirror and got to cutting! The trick to transferring vinyl letters to a surface without individually placing them is vinyl transfer tape. It still takes awhile to get everything on there, but the transfer tape is a super time saver and keeps your letters even with each other.
You could use this idea on mirrors like I did, on a canvas, window, glassdoor to a pantry…the possibilities are endless! I had so much fun creating this and I can’t wait to come up with a similar idea for my own house 🙂
traverseinstyle.com 