They say admitting your addiction is the first step so here goes…my name is Heather and I am addicted to making signs. I’m not sure how this happened. It snuck up on me like most addictions I suppose. You were all with me when I made my first sign. The spooktacular halloween sign and now I feel like I’ve made a sign every week since then. I swear I will stop… well maybe after Christmas… no New Years Eve is actually a better bench mark. So please bear with me – I’m working through this new found addiction.
Here’s my latest.
I wanted to mimic the reclaimed wood on my bench with a new piece of pine board. Boy what a trick! I used about three different techniques. First I tried a homemade stain. You put a piece of steel wool in a cup of apple vinegar and let it soak over night. I think it would have been better if I had let it soak more like a week though as it didn’t really change the wood that much. It also gave the wood a more grey shade then I was looking for. Next I tried adding a raspberry tea bag to the concoction. This gave it quite a bit more color but it will still just looking to “oaky” for me. The reclaimed wood has a bit of red undertone to it. So I decided to add a coat of chestnut stain that I had laying around.
Here’s the board I started with – just a standard pine:
Here’s what it looks like in comparison with the reclaimed wood after staining:
The result is not bad but I’ve just come to the conclusion that nothing compares to the real thing. After my staining marathon. I stenciled on the words I wanted and then distress the whole thing.