The weathered look is on my side

A week or so ago I decided to start tackling a little art project.

  I had been envisioning a simple piece of wood framed out, stained a nice gray with some kind of white design painted on.  So off to home depot for their super convenient 2 x 2 piece of plywood($4.77),  some of the cheapest trim I could find which was .68 a foot and it said it was "trellis" trim(1 1/2wide x 1/4thick). So I spent a little over $10 on the wood.

 I laid the trim out and marked where I needed to cut(I didn't miter the corners so two pieces are a bit longer than the other two).  If you lay it out it makes sense.  Then I used some gorilla glue on each piece right before I used the nail gun to attach it.  

I had to have hubby hold the pieces as I nailed them to keep all the edges lined up.  I bought the cheapest materials I could so I didn't have a real good thickness to work with when nailing but it worked..Only one nail popped through but hey it adds to the rustic charm right? Here is how it looked once all the trim was attached.  

Here is my sad little nail that came through..

I sanded the whole piece to even up the edges and just take a bit of the roughness off of it.

Then took my minwax water based stain in slate($10) and applied with a sponge brush and wiped away the excess with a cloth. 

I LOVE all the gorgeous stencils that I'm seeing out there but I have been a little shocked at the prices.  I originally wanted to do a rustic looking piece of wall art but I am no artist so I decided I would go the stencil route since I can't draw a good stick figure.  I started researching the ones I really like and they were anywhere from 29.99 to 49.99.  Gulp...that was going to add a penny or two more to this project.  

So after a little research I came across this Free Stencil on the This Old House website.  It was too large for the look I was going for so I minimized it 50% on our copier, cut it out and then played with the design.  Lining up all the points on the stencil made it much easier to just go for it and not have to measure anything.

I traced the stencil on with chalk.  I don't know if this was a good route to go or not but it worked for  since I was painting the design with white and planing on roughing it up a bit.

I couldn't find the white paint that I thought we had laying around so I just used the Kilz that we had in the garage.

 I also didn't have a good brush to use but just went with it because I was determined not to spend $$ on anything but the wood and stain.  After it was all painted I roughed it up a bit with my sanding block .

What do ya think?  I think it turned out pretty good.  I am glad the weathered look is in because it helps hide the fact that I not only can I not draw but I also have a hard time tracing:)

Here it is on our living room wall..Looked kind of blah there with nothing around it..

 So I threw it up on what I call my mantel since we don't have one...I liked it much better here!

 Here is a close up of that shows off the messy rustic finish!

I linked this project to several of the parties in my sidebar on the right and in the "party" tab.

And at the The Lettered Cottage who have a fab big button to post right here but I can't get it to work..Arg.

And:

Nifty Thrifty Things

Laugh Love and Craft

The Artsy Girl Connection