The first task is to decide the size of your sign.  For this project I am creating the sign for a bookshelf decoration, so it is not very large.

I have added in the word READ in all caps, and two small images of a giraffe reading a book.  I want the giraffe to overlap the D, so I'll need to create an outline of the image and use it cut subtract the outline from the D vector.

Next, I tried to create an outline with all elements selected. This created an issue because the outline for the READ text needed to be much thicker than what I needed around the giraffes.  So I decided to break this out into two more steps.  

First let's select only the text.

With the text selected we can adjust up the outline to be very bold.

Now select the images and outline these.  You will also want to select the outlines and use the combine tool to unite these with the outline of the text.