Well, I kind of surprised myself at how well the signs that I painted for our upcoming wedding came out! It seems that a lot of my friends loved them too - and it has been suggested that I try making a few more different styles, possibly to start selling?!
My Candy and Lemonade signs were just painted on MDF by hand, using a few different techniques to make them look rustic - but we found some old rough bits of fence wood when we went to Richmond Park the other week and gathered them up to experiment on.
Being a huge Harry Potter fan I decided to try a Hogwarts sign - and as this was a long piece of wood, I had room for another, so went for a rustic weathered looking beach sign.
I painted half the wood in black acrylic paint and the other half in a dark blue colour. After about an hour of drying I added some yellow poster paint and turquoise to the blue side - and a bit of copper acrylic paint to the black side and just smudged it all in.
Once the paint was dry to touch I smeared on some PVA glue in different thicknesses and directions and left the wood on the radiator until the glue felt tacky to touch.
I mixed a lighter shade of blue (used a lot of white paint) and painted over the dark blue side, dragging the brush the opposite way to the glue. This can be done very roughly for the more rustic look.
I then used the dark blue paint, to paint over the black side of the wood and again painted over the PVA glue.
I left the wood on the radiator to speed up the cracking process, you should start to see little cracks appear in the paint almost straight away.
I then had a little look online at the Harry Potter style font and chose a joined up font for the beach sign (a bit like the Coca Cola writing). Once all the paint had fully dried I copied the font on with a pencil. Then I went over the Hogwarts one with a black felt tipped calligraphy pen (I picked this up in Rymans stationers).
I had also got myself a Uni Chalk marker in white, the type that is used to write menus on chalk boards. Oh My God! It is awesome. I used this to highlight the lettering and also to write the beach sign.
I finished off with a coat of clear wax and some smudges of dark wax and a few smears of copper paint ( I used my finger for this) to give it an aged patina look.
They are not quite finished yet - but I have a few more ideas up my sleeve, so keep visiting!