Counting THe Days 'Til HarrellOweeN
We were inspired by a project that we stumbled across several years ago and set out to make our very own version of a Halloween countdown sign.
Now we have an awesome, 8 foot tall, mega-bright orange countdown sign to let everyone know how many days until Halloween!
It All Starts Here
It all started with fastening seventeen 6″ boards to two 4’x4’x8′ posts. Nothing fancy to see here so moving on..
We Really Like Orange
After finding the most Halloweenie-vibrant orange we could, we painted the sign up and let it dry before giving it another coat of paint.
A Staggering Change
We quickly realized that it needed more character so we staggered the layout of the boards giving it more personality.
We tried stenciling the letters onto the wood but it looked like absolute garbage. So we printed some test letters on our Cricut vinyl cutter and it just wasn’t sticking to the paint and wood grain well enough.
Enter clear boat-vinyl. We bought a big’ol piece of clear, thick marine vinyl from Johan’s fabrics and laid it over the entire front surface. We knew this would our vinyl lettering would stick to this stuff like a champ plus if we ever wanted to change out the lettering we just have to remove the vinyl and put a new piece over the wood.
Being Supportive
After laying the vinyl down on top, we pulled it as tight to the sides as possible. I then used these 1″x1″ pieces of wood to hold the vinyl tight to the back and sides. I fastened these down with a screws and the vinyl stays nice and snug wrapped around the sides and under these strips of wood.
Planning The Design
Here we have all of the vinyl lettering cut and we are laying it out to see how everything is going to fit. With using so many fonts and so many sizes, this took a long time to design and cut so getting it mapped out before we stick it to the clear vinyl is a must.
You can also see a few rogue pieces stuck on the bottom so make certain this would stick as well as we thought.
No Going Back Now!
Here’s the final layout adhered to the clear vinyl.
Sarah cut a mini pumpkin in half and carved up two little guys to give it some pumpkin power. We left a space for the numbers which come next.
Paint By Numbers
We bought some plain wooden numbers from Michael’s craft store and painted them up a nice vibrant yellow.
To make changing the numbers easy, we plan on using magnets on the front of the sign to hold these numbers. On the back of each number we superglued small metal washers.
Haunters Love Freebies!
Our neighbor gave us this spare basketball hoop which we knew would make a great support for our gigantic sign.
We haunters love freebies! You may say hoarding but we say “preparing for an unknown build”.
Halloween Engineering
You can see in these photos that we really made the sign to not budge an inch. We get crazy winds so we needed to make sure this thing wasn’t going to tilt and smash somebody in the noggin.
We used two huge braces behind the 4″x4″s that are driven into the ground and are attached to the posts.
We then have two large metal stakes driven through the base into the ground.
Plus 200 (I think) pounds of sand as weight on the base.
To top it all off, we have three cables secured to the back that run to three screw-down stakes.
All-in-all, I don’t think it’s going anywhere!
Just Hanging Around
We added some rubber bats along the top and two skeletons along the sides.
The metal arm that the one little fella is hanging from is a swing out TV mount. You’ll see why in the next photo.
Below all that, you can see we now have two magnetic tool bars screwed to the sign to hold our numbers. Magnets are awesome, right?
Now Broadcasting
We have a 24″ tv attached to the sign that tells people that they can tune their car radio to 107.9 FM and listen to the music that we have playing on our pumpkin archway.
We’ve also added some up-lights to accent the face of the large skeleton and the number of days left.
Nighttime Tunes
And here’s the tv on at night. If only people nowadays knew how to work something as prehistoric as a car radio.
Closeup
Here’s a closeup of the TV image. We’ve actually redesigned it to be more bold and legible from people driving by. This is the old version with fonts that were a bit too small.
This TV can be set to display a single image from a USB drive that plugs into the back.