Crafty Nonsense Signs

So I was looking through my brother's wife's blog Poppies at Play last night. It's pretty amazing, all the craftiness she does (and her blog followers too). One thing that seems to be really popular all around, and to be honest has been popular for years, is the idea of putting vinyl lettering on a painted slab of wood. I call these nonsense signs. Well, I thought I'd get in on the action. So I've analyzed the concepts and would like to offer some better ideas to all those crafty folks out there.

The biggest thing I've noticed is that the words you put on the boards don't have to mean anything - hence the name nonsense sign. I don't mean use gibberish, I mean use any words you like.
Here's an example I found on the internet. It's a pretty cool idea. Make a bunch of oversize scrabble tiles and lay them out on your wall. The only problem with this one is that the words have no connection to one another (other than the physical cross-word connection).


Here's my update to the idea. All of the words have a meaningful connection to one another. In fact the placement to the names relative to each other may have profound meaning and should cause you to ponder.



The next idea is to choose a quote from somewhere. Here's one from the internet.



Duh! Apparently you should find a quote that states the obvious. To make it better, choose a useful quote, like this one from Yogi Berra.




The next idea is to take 2 unrelated words or phrases, put one in big bold letters and the other in small, skinny script, of contrasting color, directly on top of the other. The most common usage of this is a last name in bold and the phrase "families are forever" as the subscript. This is great, but be more creative! Pick words that are interesting to you like this.



Next we have this - and it's really fun. It's simply the last few words from a book. This is a poor example because the ellipses should be in front of the phrase indicating it is the end fragment of a sentence. But the idea is to not use a full sentence, but instead the last half or so. The best part is that the ambiguity of it's meaning is it's appeal.


Here's my version. I took the last words directly from "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"



Three more Ideas to go.

Choose a few random, alliterative nouns, and place a cute symbol between them. Here's one from the internet.


And here's my better version.



Next we have this.


It's a gerund with it's descriptor (the adjective). What the heck is "Country Living" supposed o mean? It doesn't matter! Here's mine.



The last one is the most minimalist. Simply use a single word. The best kind is is an imperative verb - like you are commanding someone. Andy made a big sign that said "Gather". Here is mine.



I hope I've inspired you to go out and buy a vinyl cutter and some wood and start making nonsense signs of your own!