The Old World Direction Sign

Hello. Today is a gorgeous day to be outside, but if you have time, I have a"classroom" project for you. It is a direction sign or marker. I saw something similar on Pinterest. (What did we do before Pinterest? Seriously, I can't ever go back.) I wanted this to appear to be from a thousand years ago, but still cute. I also wanted to make note of the places we would read about or "visit" in Literature and History that year in school. 

 I started with some shims I took from the garage. I am not sure why we had these, hubby doesn't do a ton of carpentry work. They are just plain, thin pieces of wood about the size and weight of a ruler. They are not sanded, but the rough look is perfect for this project. (Watch out for splinters!)

Next, I got out all my acrylic paints. Any colors will work, but I used muted slightly faded colors and added water to a couple to fade them out even more.I wanted the sign to look old and weathered. I spread out some newspaper and painted away.

The paint dries very quickly. I used this black paint to write out the names of the places on each piece. It has a very narrow tip, making it easy to write with. I also used a brown Sharpee marker on a few for variety. You can use whatever you have handy.

Here you see writing as it dries. (Zzzzzzz...) This took an hour or so.

This picture came out so much worse than I thought.(Flash? Where are you??) You can see how I attached the wood pieces to a tall stick with 8" lengths of yarn. You could use any twine or string. Just wrap it around the sign and the stick a couple times and tie in a knot. They are uneven and out of balance, that is great for this sign.

Here we are on my front porch. It isn't sturdy enough to take much weather. It wouldn't survive in the garden for long. It was in my homeschool room last year for student inspiration. I'm not sure it did that. I am thinking of painting over the city names and using different national capitals and how far away they are. Paris, Moscow, Berlin ... But you could put grandma's house, 37 miles. Or Disney World, 768 miles. You get the idea.

 I am sure I enjoyed this more than my student did. But it would be great in a classroom. And as always, thanks for reading.