A Good Luck Sign for St. Patrick’s Day

I found this shamrock sign in the dollar section at Target, and I was so excited to create a good luck sign for St. Patrick’s Day!  I have included an easy version and a more advanced version for you to see.

Materials Needed:

Shamrock Sign (mine came from Target in the dollar section), or other board/sign of your choice. Horseshoe – mine came from Hobby Lobby

Stencils – optional

Sharpie Marker – color of your choice, or if you’d rather use paint go for it.

Longer version will need these additional things:

Dremel – optional

Safety Goggles

Soldering Iron or wood burning tool

Paintbrush – optional

Polyurethane – optional

This is the back of the shamrock I bought at Target in the dollar isle. The front is planked wood – you’ll see it in future pictures. If I wouldn’t have found this I probably would have bought a board I liked at Hobby Lobby to use for this project.

This is the horseshoe I used. It’s from Hobby Lobby and cost $2.50 during a 50% off resin sale. If I wouldn’t have found this, I would have picked up a horseshoe from a flea market in town for $2 and nailed it in place.

For the easy version –

Set your horseshoe in place where you want it to be. Decide where you want your letters to be. Color in your stencils or freehand your letters. Attach your horseshoe. That’s it for the easy version. You’re done. *Continue on if you’d like to go further…

Next I used my Dremel and sand down the letters to make an indent in my wood.  I was adding depth to my piece, but you could skip this piece and move on.

Don’t forget your safety goggles please.

You can see the sanded out letters here. I didn’t need to go very deep.

Warm up your soldering iron. Use your soldering iron to burn the letter indention. This will take “a lot” of time and patience. Keep going until you get the look you want.

*This was before I had a wood burning tool, now I would much rather use my wood burning tool for this project and it would go much faster.

Here is a picture of the soldered letters.

I decided I wanted to put polyurethane on my picture to protect it. I used Miniwax Fast-Drying Polyurethane Clear Gloss. *I wouldn’t recommend this if you just used marker – it might cause the marker to bleed depending on the wood. If you painted your letters instead of using a sharpie you should be able to polyurethane it.

Put one coat of polyurethane on and let it dry. Continue to put coats on and let dry until you get your desired look.

Put your horseshoe on and you are done.

I have mine hanging on my front door. You could just use it for St. Patrick’s Day or leave it up year around.