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Therion
07-01-2007, 09:08 PM
My local group with my former highschool friends is small: we have 3-4 people. Still, we manage to accomplish a lot even with so few. Over the last two weeks we've been making signs for Ron Paul. I've written this report so that others can learn from our successes and failures.

Last week we bought materials. Originally we planned on getting some sort of tarp, and we checked art stores and Home Depot but couldn't find anything durable enough. Checking through all of our options, we ultimately decided on plywood. We bought 3 4'x8' sheets for $10 each, which we cut in half, giving us 6 4'x4' sheets for $5 each. This was a little expensive, and later we found out that we could just use cardboard. If you're going for quantity over quality (which you should), then get as much cardboard as possible out of dumpsters or whatever. Once it's painted then it will look about the same. You should be donating money to the campaign, not wasting it on materials. We also picked up stencils that were 4" high and some black spraypaint.

Today we actually constructed the signs. We found 2 more pieces of wood in dumpster (who would throw this stuff away?), one 4'x5' and another 4'x8'. We painted all of these, using about half a gallon of acrylic white enamel. This went really fast with four people, and we only needed one coat for the plywood.

We had some trouble with the stencils. 4" isn't tall enough, we need at least 6" stencils. We ended up printing off 8" letters on the computer and cutting out new stencils onto pizza boxes. They ended up looking really nice, but the problem was that each letter was individual. That meant that every time we spray painted a letter we had to cover the area around it with newspaper, and still we got a lot spilling over. That spraypaint will go into even the smallest crevice, and some will even go through a single sheet of newspaper. Doing it over, we would have made one big stencil with the entire message (Ron Paul 2008!) instead of individual letters.

So we ended up with 7 signs finished, and the big sign we plan on freehanding tomorrow. We're going to hang them up on overpasses July 3rd by drilling out the corners and hanging them up with twist ties. Also we're going to make 1,000 copies of this flyer (http://www.micahnelson.com/bandw.pdf), which will cost about $100. Then we'll go out in force with some staple guns, and there won't be a telephone poll within a five mile radius wanting for a Ron Paul sign.

CurtisLow
07-01-2007, 11:02 PM
8" letters

Do you have a link to the stencils you used?

Therion
07-02-2007, 04:42 PM
We printed out pieces of paper with the letters, one letter per page. Then the pages go on top of the cardboard and get cut out with exacto knives.

Here are some free(?) fonts...

http://www.urbanfonts.com/fonts/stencil-fonts.htm

JohnCrabtree
07-02-2007, 08:59 PM
My sign experience has been similar. I started with Plywood too. I am using the Plywood signs on permanent places where the signs wont be removed like my yard. I bought a 6" stencil Kit for $7 and a 3" stencil kit of $3. My sings all say "Ron Paul 2008" on my larger signs I also have in 3" lettering "Protect your Liberty" I made 10 cardboard signs with these stencils this morning in under an hour with 1 can of spray paint and only a small amount of white paint for the background. I'll be making about 20 more tommarow. I have a free source of cardboard since I work at a restaurant right now (KFC).

For Benton Harbor/St. Joe meetup we will have for July 4th:
5 plywood signs
about 6 dozen cardboard signs
7 Ron Paul Revolution banners that were sent to us from Arizona
250 + flyers to pass out
150 +Ron Paul CDs with Video, Audio, and text.

The Revolution will not be televised...
But it will be youtubed.
I'll make a small video and hopefully get it up on youtube in the next couple weeks. It would be great if all of us participating in the July 4 overnight would make a video if possible. Having 1,000+ overnight videos would be impressive.

nayjevin
07-02-2007, 09:24 PM
Here is how our group made AWESOME looking signs:

We were lucky to get used wire-supported campaign signs from a previous local campaign -- several hundred. It's a big piece of glossy paper folded and stapled around a wire support wicket, we just turned a bunch inside out -- they are white on the inside.

So we had about 100 blank wire signs.

Then we took one of the signs and made a stencil out of it with plastic stencils, a pen, and an x-acto knife.

Then we had one person spraypaint (loosely) an american flag on the sign. Just a blue box and a few red stripes.

Then we spraypainted black letters with the stencil: Ron Paul -- Prez 2008

Very simple, very fast, looks great! I'll post a picture if I can get one.

carla8478
07-05-2007, 05:05 PM
1) You can purchase larger stencil kits from a place like Hobby Lobby.

2) I would take the individual letters and line them up on a larger piece of plastic material. Trace the letters and cut them out to make a master stencil. Then you won't have to worry about lining them up every time.

3) Another option is to purchase (or borrow) an overhead projector. Then you can project your text as large as you want to trace and cut out.

4) When using stencils also use adhesive spray. At Hobby Lobby they have some that is repositionable. It needs to say that. You spray the adhesive on the back of the stencil and then stick it down to the cardboard (or whatever materials you're using for your signs). With the stencil glued down the paint doesn't spray up underneath it. And if you make sure you get a REPOSITIONABLE spray it doesn't permanently glue. You can remove it. Kinda like post it notes.

5) www.RonPaulRevolution.com has a great how to video and tips on sign making.

Hope this helps

Carla