$1 Welcome Sign

Who would have thought that this old $1 Longaberger Basket sign could look so cool? Even though I quickly grabbed it up from the thrift store, I had no idea that it had so much potential.

Whoever had painted it the first time around used some sort of crackle medium, because when I tried to paint over it, my paint became really transparent and slimy. I painted 3 coats of white to try to cover up the dark red and blue paint, and ended up with a relatively blank slate to do some stenciling. You could still see a little of the crackling, but it wasn’t nearly as big or obvious as it had been on the sign originally.

I printed off some different fonts and experimented with sizes up against the wood. Once I found one I liked, I sprayed it with a tacky stencil spray so that it would stick to the wood.

I then traced the outline of the letters on the back of the paper in pencil, stuck the paper where I wanted it to be on the sign, and scribbled over the front of the paper so that the letter outlines were lightly rubbed onto the sign.

I peeled the paper off and filled the letters in with a black acrylic paint. I then lightly sanded over the letters in the direction of the wood grain with a coarse sand paper. I stained the wood trim a dark oak color, and then painted over the letters and the white with an antique glaze, and quickly wiped it off. This is what I ended up with.

The initial crackling came through beautifully once the wood was sanded a little bit, and the glaze filled the cracks in just enough to give it a perfect aged look. I even ended up with several large cracks through the letters, like this one through the E and L that I love.

I started off with an old looking sign, and ended up with a sign that is old looking, but in a good way!

I'm linking this to the CSI Project.