Pawsitively Creative : husband

Saturday, February 18, 2017

Saying I love you with wood

Hello and welcome to my little blog. Hopefully you all have had a wonderful holiday with Valentine's Day. I decided to make my DH a wooden sign. The numbers on the sign are very special to us and one of a kind.

I started with some leftover pine boards and stained it with MinWax. I let that dry overnight and then printed out my latitude and longitude. These coordinates are the location of where Kyle and I first met. Awwww! I printed just the outline of the numbers to save on ink.

The next step was to "weather" my boards. I applied some watered down DecoArt chalky paint. After that was dry, I dry brushed some of the same chalky paint over the boards. Viola! The easiest way to make new boards look older and weathered. TIP-You might also want to take some random objects (metal works best) and beat the boards. This technique makes some interesting intentions for your stain to seep into. I've used a tire iron, chains, an axe, hammer and such on past projects. It's awesome and fun.

The time consuming part came when I outlined all of the numbers and letters to show the coordinates. Yes, some people use transfer paper, others remember to flip their image before they print it and trace that outline but I plum forgot and had to transfer paper. So, I taped my "template" to the board and used a pen to trace the letters. Using a bit of force while tracing I was able to get the font onto my board and then use a pencil to make it even more apparent.

Once my outline was done I used DecoArt titanium white and painted the letters and numbers.

After everything was dry, I used a hand sander and lightly sanded parts of the boards to create even more of a weathered look. Below is a closer look after the sanding.

All done and ready to hang up. I nailed some shims to the back of the boards and some hooks. This was a gift for my husband for Valentines Day and I just got it hung today. Whew! Here is a look at it on our wall.

Please don't mind my wall color. Our living room has not been painted yet and this brown was there when we moved in. I am so very tired of living in brown houses. Haha! But that is another post for another day.

Hugz and Carpe Diem! Thank you for stopping by!

~Niki

I would like to share this design with these challenges:

A Bit More Time to Craft #38-Anything Goes

Creative Carte Blanche-Love

Rhedds Creative Spirit-February Challenge

Thursday, February 11, 2016

Valentine's Day Card

Hello everyone! With V-Day 3 days away I figured I needed to get started on my hubbies card. I decided to make him one this year (a first for me) because I love him and he deserves a handmade piece! Yeppers, he's awesome sauce like that! Haha!

I kept it mostly CAS/masculine but of course had to experiment with a new way to create some patina! One of my favorite artists growing up was Amy Brown (and she's still awesome sauce!) I remember getting her book when I was younger and she experimented with paints and salt. So I grabbed some salt and sprays and performed my own experiment. Here are two results.

The above picture features stamping with a TH stamp and heat embossing with Rangers Verdigris EP and multiple layers of LSG sprays with a layer of salt here and there. The picture below features larger salt grains, LSG sprays and DecoArt Carbon black mister.

Pretty! Sometimes I am sad to create a background because I don't want to cover it up with anything! Know what I mean?

Anyway, I used the larger panel to create my 9 small squares and edged those with Copper Inka Gold. Those were adhered to black cardstock that I spritzed with DecoArt misters and LSG sprays.

The X's and O's were found in my Alpha letters stash. They don't all match but it's okay by me. I rubbed some of the Copper IG on those as well and left the Glittery X's alone. The heart was drawn and cut out then painted with Carbon Black, a coat of multi medium and Prima black micro beads were added for texture. I stamped inside the card as well but that is a secret! Hehehe!