SAVIOR

Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.   –Luke 2:11

This is truly my favorite sign, and I knew it the minute I finished it. I wanted to keep it for myself! I started by nailing an assortment of boards together with vertical braces on the back to form the sign. I think the irregular height of the boards and the slightly ragged ends add to the character, but originally I left the jagged ends because I planned to cover the ends with trim boards.

I dry-brushed on the turquoise, with some lime green in the middle for highlighting. For the lettering, I used my tried-and-true printout-puzzle method and taped the template onto my sign boards. In hindsight, this was a major mistake. Huge. Never hammer lots and lots of nails into copy paper and expect to be able to rip it out later. Without a lot of time-consuming shredding and prying and angst.

The rope lettering was fairly simple. I untwisted a length of 3-strand natural fiber rope. I used one strand and placed it along the letter template. For thicker sections of the font, I twisted the rope to slightly unravel it and bunched it up. For thinner sections, I twisted it the other direction to tighten the fibers. I used copper-plated weather strip nails and a small mason hammer to attach the rope.

The part I didn't photograph was the maddening end-of-the-evening session of removing the paper scraps from beneath the rope. In hindsight, it would have been much better to cut out and trace the letter template, which is what I did for Good Shepherd. Lesson learned!