The project that started it all.

Last summer I was cleaning my back yard and came across an old wooden table that I found on the side of the road. I thought about throwing it away and then decided that there had to be SOMETHING I could make with it. Sooo it began...

I started by taking the table apart and seeing what I could salvage. Once I did that, I laid out the good pieces and came up with my design.

I used some thin wood strips and screws to hold it together.

Once I had it all put together I came up with a design to put on it. I'm not great at free hand and eyeballing my hand lettering so I made a templet with graph paper and drew it out with pencil before I started to paint.

This took FOREVER!

A cool trick I learned for transferring letters onto an object is to color the back of the paper with chalk, then lay it on the piece you want the writing on and go over the front of the paper with pencil. It will leave a very light line that you can follow! Once I did that I was ready to paint! I thought I would just use the chalk paint markers but they didn't work. So I went to Michaels and got regular acrylic paint and a paint brush. The whole time I was painting I kept saying, "Don't mess up, don't mess up!" I thought it was a little boring with just the words and really wanted to add a design. I always use things around me for inspiration and I wanted something on it that was close to my heart. I always refer back to my tattoo that I got with my sisters of three arrows.

Using that for inspiration I found a great stencil at Michaels by Martha Stewart with arrows and painted those on my sign. I also added some dots to accentuate the details at the top and bottom. And VOILA! My trash turned into treasure WITH special meaning, and cost next to nothing! Just using things I already had around the house. I now have a one of a kind piece to hang in my home.