How to Make Vinyl Signs | Putting Vinyl on Signs

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Now that I’m on summer holidays, I’ve had the time to venture into larger vinyl projects – vinyl signs.

I’ve seen many beautiful wooden signs out there. I’ve also seen people make signs out of tiles and even chalkboards. There are all different kinds of signs that can be made. I couldn’t wait to give this a try. It’s not as hard as you think.

The concept is basically the same as working on mugs or water bottles – design a graphic, cut it out on the Cricut and apply it to the item. However, the graphic is much larger when it comes to signs – you can either do it as one entire piece or piece by piece – it depends on the graphic.

This is all done with adhesive vinyl. For details on adhesive vinyl – cutting, weeding and applying, be sure to check out my Cricut Basics post.

Vinyl Family Signs

Family Signs are something I’ve always admired and so I was quite excited to try one of these. I created a family sign for my best friend – incorporating her wedding date and her children’s birthdates.

I created the elements of this sign separately – basing it on the measurements with the sign. I purchased this wood sign from Michaels and used Oracle 651 permanent vinyl on it.

Once I had all the elements cut and weeded, I was able to finalize my layout.  So for this project, I cut everything separately. Just make sure you have all the correct sizes before you cut!

I transferred the largest elements first (the title and the end quote) – ensuring that things were centred and the way I wanted them. Then I put the birthdates in. Lastly, it felt a bit empty in the middle so I added the little house.

The sign itself has gaps between the wooden slats and to make life easier for me, I just worked around them.

I’m quite pleased with how this vinyl sign turned out. I hope to make more. I have a couple of ideas of what I want to do for my own kids.

There is also a way of using vinyl to make a stencil and then painting. That’s a bit more work – more work than this as it involves the actual painting part. I may try that in future – but for now, I wanted to start with something relatively easy.

Vinyl Quote Signs

I simply love these inspirational quotes on wooden signs. Again, this is a wooden sign from Michaels with Oracal 651 permanent vinyl put on it. The simplicity of this vinyl sign makes me love it all the more. It is a quote that I often use with my kids.

Since this was relatively quite simple, I cut this as one piece. I love how it turned out.

There is a procedure in which you can use non-permanent vinyl or stencil vinyl to make a stencil and then paint the saying on.  I think I will have to try that in the near future and compare which one I like the look of better.

Vinyl Signs for School

These vinyl signs make great photo props. Because it’s chalkboard, they can be re-used from year to year, as well as used for various people.  I’ve seen a number of these “First Day” signs – some are quite extensive and notate a lot of information.  I wanted to keep mine simple, yet still, contain the pertinent information.

For this graphic, I cut it out as one entire piece – simply select all your elements and “attach it” when working in Design Space.

Something new I tried with this project was using contact shelf paper as transfer tape. Up until now, I’ve been praising the Cricut brand transfer tape for mugs and small projects. The shelf paper is super cheap – a big roll from the dollar store! It’s definitely not anywhere near as sticky as the Cricut brand.

Be sure to make sure you burnish or rub really hard with a scraper to make sure the vinyl sticks to it. I got an extra larger scraper from Cricut which works really well for this type of larger graphic. As I gently peeled off the vinyl onto the shelf paper, I had to keep my scraper handy as there were some bits that needed extra rubbing to make sure they stuck to the shelf paper. The Cricut brand transfer tape was definitely easier in this respect as it was more sticky and so the vinyl stuck to it easily and quickly.

Now the definite plus side to this type of transfer paper not being too sticky is that it made it easier for me to centre this large graphic.  I could lay it down gently onto the board and measure and readjust to make sure it was centred properly. The fact that it is not too sticky allowed me to move it around and I didn’t have to worry about prying the vinyl off.

Cricut transfer tape would never let me do this – it’s far too sticky and it wouldn’t have let me readjust it.  The shelf paper can easily be unstuck to the board and re-positioned.  This made things much easier for a larger graphic. I’m definitely going to stick to shelf paper for larger projects.

I really love how this project turned out. I hope to gift these to friends with younger children. Unfortunately, my kids are too old for this – it’s probably not that cool for mom to photograph the first day of school for high-schoolers!

Vinyl Signs for the Holidays

Here’s a similar vinyl sign that’s perfect for the countdown to Christmas. For those that are allergic to chalk, vinyl signs work well on whiteboards as well!

Whiteboard vinyl signs are also great for things like chore charts or scheduling activities. Here’s a calendar made using a whiteboard. I put vinyl on magnets to help signify different activities.

Doing these larger vinyl signs was easier than I thought. They’re fun to make – just be sure to have a lot of vinyl on hand. All of these projects required a large piece of vinyl – larger than the standard 12×12 sheets readily available. I ordered uncut rolls of vinyl for these projects.  That said, it is not impossible to do these types of projects on 12×12 sheets of vinyl – you just need to slice it and then piece it back together. That said, however, I wanted to keep it simple for myself and used the longer sheets of vinyl – which also needed the longer mat for the Cricut machine.

I do love these vinyl signs. I can’t wait to make more as gifts. They’re really not that hard to make. I love that you can personalize them. It also adds a really nice touch to home decor.

Want to remember how to make these vinyl signs? Be sure to save this on your favourite Pinterest board.