I. CAN’T. STOP. MAKING. SIGNS! help me.

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.

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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:

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Here’s what it looks like in comparison with the reclaimed wood after staining:

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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.