RUSTIC BARN WOOD SIGN

My sweet hubby and I were recently in California and we saw sign very similar to this one so we decided to try our hand at making one for a dear friend.  Last summer we had gone to a really cute farming area here in Idaho and picked through some barn wood and brought some home for projects.

While Hubby was in his shop putting together the barn wood sign, using a scrap piece of the barn wood I set out to test my whitewash.  A word about whitewashing - many recipes and ideas out there on the best way to do this but I belong to the school of "the easier the better, do what works for you." Start out with a clean brush (do not use foam, this is rough wood), dip in water and brush a test area.

Using some diluted craft paint brush paint over the wet wood, you might have to add more water, when you like the look, stop and let it dry.

I was happy with the way it looked so went forward with painting the sign.

I also tried some of this Liming Wax on the other side of the board.  If I was not transferring an image to the wood I would have used this as I love the look and nice finish attained with this product.

Straight from Hubby's shop - size is approximately 12x18 and he ripped strips of the barn wood to screw to the back so the sign will be easy to hang. 

 This is what it looks like after the whitewashing (be sure and do the tops and sides).

After drying - it will lighten up when it dries.

There are many ways to transfer images to wood and I decided with this rough wood and the fact that I wanted the sign to look old and rustic, I used Lesley Riley's TAP.  In my resource area below I will list fonts used and size of each font. This photo is before the whitewash - the wording had been cut and placed to make sure that the scale was correct.

Using a hot dry iron you adhere the words (make sure you flip the image) to the whitewashed barn wood.  Because the wood is old, dry and rough it will not adhere which was OK with me because I wanted it to look like maybe it had been around since 1963. After the transfer there were areas that I had to take a paint brush to and when that was dry I went back to some areas with whitewash again.

The final step was several coats of this matte, clear finish to protect the finish. Ready to put into the mail.

Resource

Barn Wood, go find a farmer :)
Krylon Low Odor Clear Finish, craft, hobby and hardware stores
Briwax Liming Wax, Briwax Liming Wax, 8 ounce
"The" Font, Mongolian Bati, sz 145
"Cyrus" Font, FrankRuehl, sz 180
"Family" Font, ChopinScript, sz 182
"Est 1963" Font, Century751SeBdBT, sz 99
Lesley Riley's TAP, Lesley Riley's TAP Transfer Artist Paper 5-Sheet Pack: 5 Iron-on Image Transfer Sheets  8.5 x 11Thank you for stopping by.