Family Established Sign

I have been working on a new exciting project. I normanlly like to drive around to find pieces of wood or pallets lying on the side of the road. Depending on the area, I usually stop and pick them up. About 2 or 3 years ago I spotted a board lying on the side of the road close to my home. The board looked good but the road is a busy one. I contemplated the idea of stopping and getting it, but I never found the courage to do so. I would forget about it for months but sometimes I would turn to look and see if it was still there. A few weeks ago I decided to make a Family Established Sing and my brain immidiately thought about the board on the side of the busy road. Last week on Sunday the road was quiet and not too many cars were going by. So, I decided to pulled over and pick it up. I am now working on my singn tha will say The Hutsell Family (Est. August 13, 2011). I like getting ideas from other signs but normally I change my signs in ways that it suits my taste.

This is a collage of the board. On the left is how it originally looked when I picked it up. On the right is the board wet. I washed it because it had too much dirt. I absolutely loved the color of the wet board.

As I am putting together my sign, I have all kinds of ideas about how to make a sign that is more like me and what I will be happy with. The board was too long for what I wanted so I cut it to my desired size, which is 8"x35".

when I went to Walmart I saw a wood burning wand and I immidiately wanted to try it. I practiced with the extra piece I cut off of the board.

This is the practice board. I did the same image that I have planned to add to my Sign.

This is another collage of the sign I am working on. The bottom image has the board after it dried out. The next image, is the board after I stained it in an effort to make it look like when is wet. The next image, is the wording with an image ready to be traced. The top one, is the pic with the wording before I decided to add the sunflower image.

Now that I am ready to add color to my letters I am having doubts about what should I do with it. Should I burn the entire wording and image, then fill in the letters and image with color? Or should I just go traditional and only do paint without the image? Or should I make the letters smaller and have the image in the end by itself? Ugh! I am very puzzled!

I will continue to work on it and I will post the end result in a couple of days.

I finally finished my sign! I had so many thoughts and Ideas. Ultimately I did what I had orininally intended to do and Voila! I am all done. It came out very cute....if don't say so myself :)

After this sign, I learned something new. I watch several wood burning videos before I use the burning wand and during one of the videos someone use carbon paper to tranfer the image to be burned. I immidiately thought; how easy would this new trick make my letter transfering? VERY! Is the answer. I know this is not new to some and carbon paper can be very pricey but it can be reuse, and that is a plus to me.

When using carbon paper to transfer your letters, make sure you use a stylus or something pointy. Do not press to hard or it will be too dark. To paint the sing, I used smal brushes and a sponge brush to Mod Podge to finish it.

Thanks for reading and happy DIYing!