Custom Sign for Rental Property
Instruction
Our vacation rental at the beach has a rec room with both shuffleboard and pool tables. Rental property guests often don't know that the powder used on a shuffleboard table isn't common beach sand. It looks very similar, but it's very different. Sand, on a polished shuffleboard table can score and potentially damage the table's finish. So our management company taped a very officious, laminated page, with too many words, on the wall above the table. I knew we could do better, so I made this sign to do the same job.
The goal: make an informational sign feel fun, like something you'd buy at a gift shop.
Figure out your message and edit it. Repeatedly. I revised the message for my sign about 3 or 4 times to minimize words and make it lighthearted.
Finally, choose some fonts. I wanted to keep it simple but use distinct fonts for the right effect. For this sign, I used Arial for most of the message, DIN Condensed for the punch words, then Dancing Script and Chalkboarder for specific words to get the effect I was after. It's a lot of fonts, but I think it worked out in the end. Choose the fonts that will best help you get your message across.
As with any project, you need to determine the best settings for your material. I chose chalkboard MDF, knowing that the right engraving settings will typically turn it white. But this framed chalkboard from Michaels was a new product for me, so I ran my usual test—a modified M1 test grid.
For my purposes, the best option is the fastest setting that looks the lightest. Happily, that's up in the 250 mm/sec row. I choose 60% at 250 cm/sec.
If you want a look that blends into your environment, you may want to paint, stain, or varnish your material. In my case, the sign blank I chose had a plain pine frame, and I wanted it to fit into the decor of our paneled rec room. I used just one coat of stain, brushed on (carefully) with a foam brush and immediately wiped off with a rag.
If you paint or stain the frame around your engraving material, take care to avoid getting any on the engraving surface. Clean any splatter off immediately.
I allowed my frame to dry overnight before engraving my design.
Position your material in the machine and align it with your design. After auto-measuring the thickness, make sure your design is aligned as desired. For my purposes, I wanted it all centered. So I created a framing square the same size as the interior space of my framed sign blank. With a little nudging of both the design to align it and the material itself to ensure it was square, I was ready to test the framing.
Repeat after me: “Always frame your design before processing.” I was checking to ensure the laser brushed right against the interior of the frame. Not gonna lie…I needed to tap on my sign blank a bit to get it just right.
Once it's aligned, set the framing square to Ignore and process your job!
After processing your job, clean it off to remove any residue from the engraving so it looks its best. After I ran my job, the material had a lot of soot on it. I first used a dry rag to remove the worst of it. Then I used some alcohol wipes to clean my sign. That probably wasn't the best move, because it started to also remove some of the remaining white from the surface, which you can see if you look closely at the final product. On this material, I'll know to just use moist cleaning wipes for the job.
Now hang your sign so others can enjoy and benefit from it. I used Command picture hanging strips so my sign would remain firmly on the wall without any visible signs of nails or hangers.