Candy Corn Countdown {Halloween Board}

17 Days Until Trick or Treating!!!

That's what my new sign says that I put on the porch this morning!  Halloween is one of my favorite holidays and I really enjoy decorating my front porch for the trick or treaters.  We don't have many houses in our new neighborhood, but there are TONS of kids and so I want to make sure to get my decorations out!

I left some room at the bottom so that I could set some pumpkins in front of it, but all that I have are tiny ones and so I still need to get some big ones and a few more decorations to finish off my porch!

You will need:

• 2 - 2 x 2 pieces of wood 
• 4 - 1 x 3 piece of wood (great for reusing old fence posts too!) 
• hammer
• 2" finishing nails
• white, orange, yellow and black paint
• paint brushes
• paper to create letter stencils (cardstock is best)
• Circut (or other letter cutting machine if you have one)
• something to have numbers with (mini clipboards, binder clips, pushpin, etc.)
• cute paper to make number

First you have to decide how big you want your sign and how much room you have.  I made mine about 5' tall and so that is how long you will want to cut your 2 x 2 pieces of wood.  Lay them on the ground with the ends flat against the wall and decide how wide you want you sign to be.  I cut my 1 x 3 pieces aboout 19" long  which gave me 5 pieces per board.  This will be how wide my sign will be.  I only needed 16 pieces so I had quite a bit of wood left over, as I only cut one piece from the 4th board.  (If you want to maximize your wood, you can cut your 2 x 2 pieces longer than 5' and have a taller sign.)  The sign in the post that I orginally got my idea from was a bit larger, but for storage purposes after the holiday, I wanted mine to be a little smaller and more easy to handle.

With the 2 x 2 posts up against the wall, lay your smaller pieces in line with each other so you can see what it will look like and can make any changes before nailing it together.  You dont want the boards to be perfectly in line with each other though so offset them a little when you start nailing them down.  Your boards will move as you start nailing so make sure to line them back up before nailing each one. 

When your boads are all nailed together you may chose to paint your board or white wash it as was done in the example that I saw.  I did whitewash mine and then didnt like it at all.  I did my best to sand it all back to its original color, but it did still end up with a slightly white tint to it. 

You can start painting!  I searched online for candy corn clip art and printed those to cut out for stencils and it worked great.  The template that I used can be downloaded for free here.  I printed two different sizes so that they weren't so uniform.  Using the stencils, paint your cand corn wherever you would like it on your board.

While that is drying, start cutting out your word stencils.  I used my Cricut to cut out the words, but you could get them online and cut them out yourself.  Once the other has dried you may then tape your word stencils to the board and paint them on as well.  Get excited because you are almost done!!!!

You may then paint any other designs that you would like.  I liked the pennant flags and spider that Laura's example had and so I copied those for myself.  I also added a few glow-in-the dark skeletons.  Glitter paint might be cute too!

You now need to make your countdown numbers, since that is the whole point of the board to begin with.  I wanted to use paper that I already had and so I simply took bright orange paper and cut it into little squares and used a Sharpie to draw on the numbers.  I tried to find some cute little clipboards, but haven't made it to an office supply store and Wal-Mart didn't have any so I just used some binder clips!  I think that look fine, but I live in a very open area in the middle of Oklahoma and so the wind kept blowing them off!  I finally used a pushpin instead of a nail to hold on the clips are they are working great now.  You could use scrapbook paper of anything else that you like, but I just wanted to make some simple numbers.

If you would like some step-by-step pictures, check out Laura's version here.  I hope you enjoy your board and have fun making it!!

~ Candace