XL Halloween Countdown to paint and enjoy with your kids!

Now that we’re officially into autumn, children everywhere are anxiously counting down the days until the night of Halloween! Of course, between now and then they will also change their mind about what they want to dress up as at least 6 different times only to decide they just want to go as a ghost. Oy, kids! Even with all the stress over costumes and candy, we still love Halloween so I made this XL Halloween Countdown to further build anticipation. Only a few more weeks!

Gather Supplies

To make my XL Halloween Countdown I grabbed a 11″ x 47″ piece of scrap wood from our garage. We were using it to make some shelves in the house so luckily it was already painted white and ready to go. I love this size because it’s large enough to take up an entire corner but not so big that I’d worry about it falling on anyone. Wouldn’t want to hurt any of the little witches or goblins!

Perfect Paint

The first step was cutting the words out of vinyl with my Silhouette and transferring them to the board. You could also use pre-cut adhesive letters or a stencil for this step but the vinyl makes it reeeeeeeally easy. Next comes the fun part…adding the color! Since it’s a fairly large surface and I was a bit short on time, I went with a super thick one coat paint. I wasn’t concerned too much with perfect coverage so I was able to roll over the board in one go and have it dry to a perfectly flat finish.

The Reveal

After the paint had dried, I used a craft knife to pull up the corners of the vinyl letters and then carefully pulled them away from the board. With the exception of a few uneven sections of wood, the vinyl stencil left perfectly crisp lines! For the finishing touch, I painted a 4″ x 5″ wood plaque with chalkboard paint and glued it to the top of my XL Halloween Countdown.

Start the Halloween Countdown

And that’s it, we’re ready to get our BOO on! I know my kids are going to love watching the numbers decrease until it’s time to go trick or treating. Hope you enjoy making this XL Halloween Countdown!