Monday, November 14, 2011

November...It's all about FAMILY!!!

Holy cow! Another month has flown by and it's time to get crafting again.
With all the excitement of the upcoming holiday season my thoughts are turned directly towards my family.
So what better theme for this month's project than that...FAMILY!



Not so super original-these are so popular lately! But it fit the theme and well, I wanted one so this is what you get.
Overall, it wasn't hard but it was a little time consuming. In other words, a great project for the upcoming Thanksgiving break.

Here's what I used:

1/2 inch MDF cut to 12 inches wide by 24 inches long
Valspar Spray Paint in Mediterranean Blue
Ceramcoat acrylic paint in Antique White
Paint brushes
Sand Paper
paper and pencils

To start I painted the board, a few quick coats of beautiful blue and then set it aside to dry.

Next I made a list of "Rules" that I wanted on my board and then I played around on my computer with fonts and sizes until I had something I liked.

It took 3 pages set on landscape to fill the board. You can print off the pages here if you wish...




I then taped the pages together omitting the margins so that everything lined up nicely. Then I used the old-school graphite transfer method to get my rules onto the board-you know the one. Rub your pencil all over the back side of the image, flip it back over-right side up. Tape it into place on the base board and then trace the outline of the image. The image is then transferred onto the wood leaving you a great pattern to follow.

From there started the time consuming part...filling in all the letters! I used the acrylic paint, thinned out just a bit with water and a fine detail paint brush. To get the color level I wanted I repeated this process once the first coat was dry. 


Sand paper and distressing was last.
I hit the edges hard with the power sander and then went over the lettering with a fine grit sand paper to soften up the lines a bit.
 {I'm still debating with myself if I should add a layer of stain or not.}

But there you go! Not to bad right? You could do it too!
I love it, my friends love it, and more than that my kiddos read it and talk about what it says. Maybe one of these days they'll put it all into action!

An after thought to share...
If I were to do this again I would use 1 inch pine instead of the MDF just so that I could get a little more character from the wood, kind of like this:

Love that you can see the grain and the knots! Oh well, next time right?
Until then, have fun creating.
I hope you'll check back in over the week to see what the other WYLTC gals have to share when it comes to FAMILY for them. And don't forget the linky party opens on Friday, we want to see how you celebrate FAMILY too...


Happy Crafting!


1 comment:

The Allen Family said...

That is fabulous!! I'm totally doing something like this for my son's room that we're doing right now. Can't wait! :)