Welcome to the Blog today, Friends. I’ve been working on a couple of Fall projects to bring the new season inside. I also have been working on clearing out the garage…..that may take months. LOL. Anyway, I was in the garage a few days ago and found some old fence pickets that had been around for forever. I figured there was something I could do with them besides throw them out. This is what I came up with. Had some help from my handy Hubby on the actual construction. I think you will like how simple this is to put together.
Start with your boards and dry fit them together. I used four for this project. they were already cut for another project so I didn’t have to do that. I matched the more weathered boards and placed them in the middle of, what would become, my sign.
The next step was to figure out what would work as a cross board to help hold the boards together. I had an old LARGE paint stick in the garage and I tried that out for size. Turns out it fit perfectly. I was really amazed.
So, we went to the local hardware store and picked up three more. They were free.
Next, we glued two of the boards together and clamped them. We repeated this step with the other two boards. After allowing the glue to dry……
…..we glued and clamped the two sets of two boards together and allowed them to dry.
While the four boards were clamped together drying we glued the paint sticks to the back of the boards and secured them with screws first drilling a small hole through the paint stick into the board and then screwing it in place.
When everything was dry and the clamps were removed I took some chalk paint and brushed it on the front of the boards. I wanted it to have a weathered look.
I think it looks like it’s been left outdoors and the paint has been stripped by the weather to an uneven finish. Just what I wanted for this project.
I used stencil paint and stencils to place my design on the boards. You can see in the pictures above that the stencil is secured to the board with masking tape. The paint is in a container and I used a stencil brush to apply the paint to the board. I wipe a lot of paint from the brush by tapping it on paper towels so the paint won’t run when you apply it. I used a smaller stencil brush to apply some shading. You can see that the letters look faded. After all they’ve been out in the weather just like the boards…..
I continued working with the stencils and paint adding a few leaves and a pumpkin. When I was satisfied I stopped and let everything thoroughly dry. I may add some additional pumpkins or leaves but I wanted to live with it awhile.
I had the final “L” in “Fall” tripping over the pumpkin and falling down the sign.
The final step was adding the sign to the Fall display in my Morning Room. It’s subtle and adds a touch of the antique look to the display. I was pretty happy with how it turned out. It’s nice when you can put together a project with scraps from your garage.