Do you have a license to drive that thing?

The items I am working on and making for my room, the actual full finished product won't happen until things are all hung up and placed properly. But for now, I actually have something finished!

I know I showed this picture before and asked for people to guess what it was for. Well, now you'll find out what I used these old license plates for.

First I took tin snips and cut apart the letters.

I had in mind a few words I wanted to spell out, but I didn't even really know what letters and numbers I had until I stopped cutting and laid them out.

My sister pointed out I had the letters for 'calm' and 'storm'. So, I found a B and 4 and made use of a 3 for 'the' and came up with calm b4 the storm.

Now, after cutting those apart the edges were rough and somewhat sharp. So I took the only files we had laying around (I'll be honest, don't know if these are proper metal files or wood files but dad said go ahead and use them) and I filed down the edges so they were less abrasive.

I am just going to take a minute to tell you all how blessed I am to have a dad who has a shop where he has a number of different types of wood laying around. This was scrap flooring he had glued together for something but then had used it to set his sander so it was thinner than what he needed it for. So he cut the pieces to width for me and I cut them to length. Then, since my sister is in the process of redoing her table and had black paint, I took my boards to her place and painted them black in the front side and all 4 sides.

And this is where I made a mistake. Yes, I admit it. Dad had thought gluing and clamping would work for these letters. 

Oh, before I forget, I didn't get a picture of this part because it was kind of hard to do. I took a rubber mallet to the letters to try to straighten them out. At least a little.

Anyway, thinking they maybe would lay flat enough, I glued them.

And clamped them. And left them overnight.

This is what I found in the morning. At this point. I was very happy I had done 2 things. 1, had only tried one, and a small one. And 2, had written the words on the back of each board and didn't have to guess what length went with what word.

Dad found some..."nails"... in the basement and asked me if they would work. I want sure but I said I would try. 

And they did!! 

Found out later they were actually carpet tacs, but who cares? They worked great!

So I took an awl with a small point to tap into the plate and down into the board to make sure I had the right spot for the tacs. 

Now I didn't line up where the tacs were going in, in a line across the top and bottom because each letter had a raised line in a different place. So, I eyeballed it, made a hole and pounded that carpet tac in.

This is the final product! 

Looks pretty good. I'm happy with how they all turned out.

Now to ready the walls for where they are going...

Onward we go!