{baseball board sign with chalkboard blue}

The finished sign measures 16 1/2 in. by 16 1/2 in.

I took One pine board measuring 5 1/2 inches wide by 8 feet long.  ( I didn’t end up using the whole 8 feet).

I pre-stained and painted my board before I cut it.  I stained it first with a dark stain.  When that dried  I painted it white.  I did this so when you sand down some of the white in places, the stain shows through giving it a weathered or worn look.

Using a miter saw, I cut 3 boards each measuring 16 1/2 in long.

I laid all 3 boards side by side.

I cut two scrap boards 14 in long.  These acted as my braces to hold the three boards together from the back.  I used some wood glue and glued the boards across all three boards at the back to hold them all together.  If you need to,  you can also brad nail these  2 brace boards into the three boards to anchor them better.

Once the glue dried, I flipped the sign over and  roughly sketched out where I might want the stencils to appear

In Silhouette studio I created my stencils using the reverse or negative space for the stencil.  I wanted to have some baseball treads, but I needed to create my own.  I wanted something that resembled a tread of a baseball.

 I created a stencil using a download of leaves from a tree download.   I chose one leaf, re-sized it to about 1/2 in. long and rotated it to the angle I needed it.    I next copied it and made another one exactly across from it, rotating it in the other direction kind of resembling the letter V. Still in Silhouette studio, I next copied and pasted that pair over and over, rotating the pair as I made a  quarter circle arch until I had what I needed.

 To make sure  I had enough stencils for each corner, I cut two sets of stencils per corner, for a total of 4 stencils. Each measuring around 5 1/2 in. long.   I did not use all of the tread stencils.  I over lapped them and had to trim them down.

I used the same stencil design for the upper and lower corner stencils.

I cut all of my stencils using vinyl this time.

stuck the vinyl down and painted in the treads with red paint.

This athletic font had a middle filler that I also had to stick in the middle of each letter to create the white space.

peeled that off to reveal the name

I cut out the number 33 as a stencil because that is the number my son plays.  Each number measures 2 1/4 inches wide by 3 1/2 inches high.   I centered the stencil of the 33 roughly 8 1/2 inches from the top and in the center of the sign .  Repeated the same steps as I outlined above for doing a stencil, stuck the vinyl on,  and painted it in with red, peeled off the stencil to reveal the numbers.