Scrap Wood Photo Display

I'm a little behind on posting my tutorials from the So You Think You're Crafty competition.  I'm going to try to get caught up, so you'll be seeing more tutorials than usual.  The theme for Week 1 was Stash Busting.  I decided to use up some of my stash of scrap wood that was hanging out in our backyard.  My husband kept trying to move some of it to the burn pile and I kept rescuing it because I knew I would need it eventually.

I chose a few pieces and trimmed some up so they would be close to the same length.  I didn't want everything exact, because I was going to distress everything to make it look old.  I laid out my pieces how I thought I wanted them (although this would change later).

 I enlisted my trusty helper to assist me with the distressing process.  We banged on the boards with all kinds of different tools.  I also added some nail holes and cut into some of the ends with a hand saw.

 I had seen lots of people rave about using steel wool soaked in vinegar to age wood, so I decided to give it a try.  On this piece of scrap, I was testing out white vinegar on the left, apple cider vinegar in the middle, and balsamic vinegar on the right.  I wanted my boards to look different, so I decided to just use all three on the different boards.

 

After everything dried, I laid my pieces back out and decided to remove one of the boards to make the sign a little smaller.

 I added two pieces of wood to the back to hold everything together.

I printed out my text to the size I wanted and taped everything together.

I used my favorite transfer method of scribbling with pencil on the back and then tracing the letters on the front to make a guide.

After I went over all of my letters, I think I could have skipped the scribbling step.  My pencil made a tiny indentation in the wood where I traced and it was more visible than the graphite transfer.

I set up my card table in front of the TV one evening after the kids were in bed and used my wood burning tool to go over all of my letters.  I love that thing.  It gives you a unique look that I can't achieve with any other product or tool and I think it's much easier than trying to hand paint the letters.

 

I picked up these railroad nails a while back without really knowing what I was going to do with them.  I just thought they looked intriguing with their embossed numbers showing the year they were used.  They turned out to be the perfect thing for this project.  I hammered two of them into my photo display to hold the jute twine for the photos.

 

Mini clothespins make it easy to switch out the photos seasonally or whenever we want to add something new.  I'm addicted to printing my Instagram photos from my Postal Pix app on my phone.  If you haven't tried it, you really should.  It's so easy and fun.

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