Yield?

Young Mr. A-train had his fifth birthday this week. With that one starting kindergarten, and people asking if Z-man is going to get his driver's license when he turns sixteen I'm not exactly feeling youthful (until someone says to me "What are you, twelve?" and then proper order is restored unto the world). He absolutely loves his bike and his big wheel, and the pedal car he got for his birthday, and as he likes to make his imaginative play butt right up against reality, I decided to make him a few traffic signs out of foam.

I've never worked with foam before, but I rather enjoyed it. There was something sensorily pleasing about cutting into it and arranging it on the background pieces. Much more satisfying than paper-crafting, though not exactly a sophisticated craft medium.

I ended up making six signs in total--stop, yield, no parking, speed limit, and 2 hazards (because I didn't want to waste the extra yellow pieces I had cut)--

As always, don't look too closely as you'll see some oopsies in there, but overall I really like the way they turned out.

I think the speed limit sign is my favorite. I was going to make the limit a more of a realistic big-wheel speed, but A-train would tell me "I go way faster than that, Aunt Bee." To get the fonts and sizes right, I tried for about four seconds to free-hand those, and then said some adult words and printed off some templates from Google Images to trace in reverse.

The yield sign cracks me up with the crooked letters. We joke that it looks like it reads as "Yield? I guess? If you want? I'm not sure..." The stop sign I needed my sister's help with--I do not have a math brain and there are eight angles and eight sides and that's just way too much to deal with on a Saturday afternoon. Wanna know a secret? The 's' is on upside down. It's all I can see! But A-train is five, and has zero cares to give. It's really his nutty auntie who will be driven mad by this.

I used a thicker piece of foam for the base, and then bought the self-adhesive stuff for the details. I bought everything at Joann's. I bought some square sticks (where they sell the wood stuff and dowels) for them to be stuck into the ground, and simply glued them to the back and secured them with black duct tape).

I should have bought the next size up as these were not super sturdy for poking into the ground, but I didn't realize that until after they were made. However, my brother-in-law added some sturdier bits of wood to them to make them play-time ready instead of 'for display only.'

Of course now as I'm driving my brain is a constant whirr of "Ooo, I could make that one! Ooo that would be easy!" Because, again, I'm twelve.