Free Birthday sign!!

Who likes free stuff? Pretty much everyone, right?  Unless you’re a millionaire and have no problem spending money, just about everyone enjoys things that are free.

What’s something that’s free??? How about paint chips at your local hardware store! I love those things. I could spend hours looking through all the paint chips and designing rooms around each color.  Aside from being free inspiration, paint chips are now popping up everywhere to be decorations.

Like these found on Pinterest.  All these creative minds grabbed some free paint chips and a shape cutter and made beautiful banners, circles, and art.

Via here

Via here

I enjoy free stuff too, so I needed to jump on that paint chip decorating band wagon.  When Mr. Pal’s birthday rolled around, I decided to make a Happy Birthday sign out of paint chips.

I went to my local hardware store and stood in front of all the beautiful colors. Would I go for blue and do an ultimate male sign; or pick colors that coordinated with our décor? I went with C, none of the above!! (haha, I tricked you!)  I decided to grab red, black and white paint chips.  Why pick these colors you ask?? The reason is that Mr. Pal is a HUGE New Jersey Devils fan.

Via here

So I grabbed my free paint chips and headed home.  I cut them all into long strips as you can see here.  Oh, and if you’re wondering which paint samples I grabbed they are for Bher paint.  I’ve been a Bher paint user for as long as I can remember, and I liked the size of their paint chips for my sign.

After cutting down all the strips, I then glued the cut pieces together to make each letter in “Happy Birthday.”    As you can see from this picture, I just used Krazy Glue to make my letters.  It was within reach at the time and I didn't feel like firing up my glue gun.    

After I had each letter made I grabbed some string that I had lying around and attached each letter to the string using paper clips.

Now, I’m sure I could have done something a little bit classier to attach each letter to the string. I could have added an extra piece of a paint strip to the back of each letter to attach it to the string that way, or thought of something else, but I didn't.  There’s no reason for it, just that I wanted to use what I had in the house.  Plus I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out, so I rushed a bit to get it done since I had only two days before Mr. Pal’s big day.

Here’s the “Happy birthday” sign all strung up in front of our dining room.

In keeping with use-what-you-got, I hung up the sign using Frog Tape.  It was durable enough to hold up my banner, but didn't rip off the paint on my living room walls.

I also made a hockey puck out of the paint strips.  Did I mention Mr. Pal loves the Devils? Cause he does!  For the puck I cut the black paint strips into thinner pieces like this.

 Then I glued them all together so I had a large piece-y square.

To make the puck I just grabbed the top of a candle that I had on our coffee table.

I traced out the shape.

Then cut it out so I had my "puck."

I added a white circle along with a free hand drawing of the Devils symbol to finish it off!

As for Mr. Pal’s opinion of his birthday sign on his big day?? Well, I had to point out the sign to him.  It was early in the morning and it was before his cup of coffee.  Plus he doesn't walk around looking up when he goes through the dining room to get to the kitchen! Haha!

When he did see the sign, he loved it! He especially loved the hockey puck since it had the Devils symbol on it. 

After all of Mr. Pal’s celebration, we said good-bye to our free Happy Birthday sign.  There are so many other possibilities to decorate for birthdays!  We did, however, hold onto the homemade puck.  Being a true Devils fan, Mr. Pal likes to keep anything that has the Devils symbol on it!