A HUGE Thanks and a Pretty New Sign

Have you noticed that the blog is looking pretty spiffy today? There is one person to thank for that, and it isn't me!

My AMAZING cousin-in-law, Mandi, graciously jumped on board my crazy blog train when I told her of my plans (way back when it was just that - a plan!), and offered to help me design it. I had no idea what to expect, and I could never have predicted how amazing it would turn out. I had a rough idea of what I wanted, but she brought it to life in a way I could never have even imagined on my own.

I wanted to do something to thank her for lending her amazing talents to my blog, so I turned to one of mine. A rustic wooden sign! And since I've gotten a few emails asking how I made my Farmer's Market sign, I thought I'd bring you along with me.

After a little plotting with her lovely sister, Amber (seriously, if I weren't married to their cousin, I would ask them to adopt me as the third sister), I decided on a good ol' Family...est. sign.

This is my method of creating a lot of my pallet signs. Feel free to recreate, share, etc! All I ask in return is a little shout-out and a pin ;).

I started with a nice clean pallet. Mandi and her husband have a beautiful baby girl, so of course I sanitized the daylights out of it first. 

She's a teal girl, and I happened to have the perfect deep and moody teal on hand. It's Valspar's Perfect Storm, and it's equally beautiful on reclaimed wood as it is on furniture. 

*Notice the not-clean (though not necessarily dirty...) brush? Told ya I don't have to clean them after dry painting!

I slapped on some paint, dry style. Can I add a little painting tip here? Paint your piece in a continuous line across. Don't paint top to bottom and then move over... you can always see the line, and that ain't pretty people.

Now here's the part where I beg you not to laugh at me. 

I still print my stencils out on cardstock and carve them out with an Exact-O knife. Sad, eh? Well it works. I've tried every transfer method known to Pinterest on my reclaimed wood and nothing takes. That's not an exaggeration, I have literally never had an easy time transferring to my pallets. It's possibly the one drawback of using wood that is so weathered, all those grooves just make it so dang hard. So I painstakingly carve out pretty letters, dreaming of Silhouettes and Cricuts.

Have any tips on transferring to old and weathered wood? Please comment! I'd love to hear how you do it.

Once I can unfold my fingers from their exacto-shape and I get the feeling back in my right hand, it's time to paint again! Of course by this time I started getting giddy and forgot to take pictures of the process. My apologies. It's just painting through the stencil though, I know you can handle that!

Mandi's pretty special, so I added a little flair, but of course kept things rustic!

I'm pretty pleased with this guy, but of course it doesn't come close to being enough to thank her properly. I'm forever grateful!

Thanks for stopping by!

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