the Christmas wood plaque (how-to)

I have been having my sweet friends over to do crafts and brunch on lovely Saturday’s. Mainly for the fellowship and hanging out since everyone is so busy and there’s little time to just hang out and have fun. I love being artsy and find that whether it’s sewing, woodwork, painting, quilting, etc, it all helps me de-stress and it’s very therapeutic! I love zen!!! LOL

Some of the guidelines are keeping it simple, fun, quick and inexpensive, so the projects are under $10. This month I drew up a project that I thought would be easy and headed to Lowe’s (one of my other favorite stores)…Here’s the Christmas wood plaque project! Since several have asked what they were made out of and how… here it is!

I was initially going to use 2×4’s but then found some lighter and more forgiving wood, which also turned out to be cheaper and less time consuming to prep.

The boards ended up coming in a pack and is primarily used for wainscoting. The wood was light (in weight), smooth and grooved (so fit together) perfectly! After calculating how much wood I would need, I purchased all the supplies I would need and headed home.

I grabbed some newsprint from the recycle bin and drew out the pattern with my calculated size (30″ at the widest 2 middle boards). Grabbed a pencil, my jigsaw, sander, and workmate and went to work.

See how beautiful the wood is? I ♥ all the knots and patterns! Sand lightly (that’s what I meant by forgiving wood), it required very little sanding because it was so perfectly smooth already.

Here’s the funny part! I didn’t want to go over the $10 rule I made for the cost of our projects. So while I was at Lowe’s looking for the trim to use to hold the 4 boards together, I didn’t want to use wood thicker than 1/2″ (because of weight and the price). I remembered having a small stash of paint stirring sticks, so I came home and tried one out. It worked perfectly! I headed back to Lowe’s and asked the sweet man at the paint department how much they would cost if I got 14 of them…he said “take as many as you want!” SCORE!

Here’s the project with black accent (so when I paint later and sand) the black is revealed in parts.

I then put a light coat of creamy white acrylic paint, allowed to dry, then applied crackle (my friends new best friend), allowed to dry, then another light coat of creamy white. Wait for crackle to start it’s awesome appearance! Sand lightly around edges and surface, wipe off dust and now you’re ready for the final touches.

I pre-ordered vinyl sheets (I’ve found that they’re cheaper than at HL, Michael’s, etc), I used my cricut to cut out the letters in advance, (letters were a combination of cartridges). Apply the lettering to the board wherever you want, making sure to apply with light pressure. Now the final touch was applying a light coat of “mod podge w/glitter” (which I’ve discovered, is very hard to find). This gave it a beautiful and very light iridescence that when the light hits it–it adds just the right amount of sparkle!

That’s it! Quick, easy and inexpensive!