Cuisine Art

How much do you love the wall-art section of Hobby Lobby?  That delicious selection of "Kitchen" and "Laundry" and "Kiss Me" signs...I guess I have a thing for lettered signs because I love it there.  Until recently I had one of their metal "Kitchen" signs hanging above my pantry, but now that I am on a quest to bring more rustic charm to my kitchen, I decided to replace it with my own hand-painted sign.  So the HL sign is going to the consignment store and this guy took its place:

I started with two poplar planks from the woodworking section of Lowe's.  I had some fun banging on these with a hammer, saw, and screwdriver to roughen them up, then stained them with walnut wood stain.  I then layered on some black acrylic paint with a dry paintbrush, careful not to completely cover over the stained finish.  I just wanted it blackish-brown, almost a singed color.  Bonus: "singed" matches some of the dinners I make too!

The top one has black paint over walnut stain.  The bottom one doesn't--yet.

Then I spent about a week feeling neglectful of my little project while I tried to figure out what font to use.  I wanted it to be clean, readable letters that stand straight up and down.  This thing sat around forever, then I saw this post from Miss Mustard Seed, and wow, did she inspire me!  Her Fresh Berries sign is to die for.  I had already stained my boards AND knew I was using ivory paint, so when I saw this I couldn't believe it, and totally copied the font she used.  (FYI, it is Castellar).  I pieced together letters printed out from a Word document like so:

To transfer the letters I used this really convenient lettering technique I learned about recently from another great blogger, just can't remember who!  If you know, please comment and remind me, bad Mommy Blogger!  Anyway, I colored the backs of the letters with pencil (in this case white), then I turned the letters over onto the sign and carefully traced the edges with a regular mechanical pencil.  This transfers the white pencil from the back of the paper onto the wood:

Then it was just a simple task of painting (more or less) inside the lines.  When you look close you can find all kinds of imperfections.  I could have sanded them out but decided to leave them--actually, I kind of like them.
Michelle: 1
Crippling Perfectionism: 0
Go Me!

So here's my new sign hanging above my pantry:

If you are wondering how I attached the two boards and then hung them, I used an extremely high-tech method which requires expert knowledge.  Just kidding, I used duct tape and about 30 removable foam adhesive squares:

I love how this project turned out.  It is so much more personal (and I think cuter) than what I had before.  By the way, I decided on "Cuisine" because I am just so in love with everything French, and very excited about my trip to Belgium and France...next month!

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