Rustic Barn Wood Art (in which I get lucky and do not contract tetanus 2 weeks before my wedding)

July 26, 2012 by Anne 4 Comments

There are a bajillion awesome perks about living on a farm. Or having your parents living on a farm.

One such perk is having access to tons of cool things. And having tons of places to build forts.

Though forts are infinitely cooler than this project, they only exist in memory and are less blog-worthy. Though we did make an amazing underground-ish fort with sod for walls and plywood ceilings. It was quite the little bunker.

But–you came here for some rustic art. Here’s how it went down.

I had an idea.

And roped Kenny into helping me find an old board.

He was skeptical. (This is the typical response to my ideas.)

Finding an old board on the farm was not difficult. It took 3 seconds max.

It actually looked worse than this…we had to pry several pieces of board off this one to get it to this point. Perhaps Kenny had good reason to be skeptical.

No joke: this 3-foot board had about 20 nails in it, including some that had been sheared off so at least they weren’t poking out.

The first job was to make this scrap less tetanus-inducing. I’m sure I looked like a lunatic hammering away at this old board on our apartment lawn in the 90 degree heat.

I then sanded it down well to make it even more art friendly. And because I rather dislike slivers.

After sketching out my verse on it in chalk,

I paint-sketched over the chalk.

I filled in the paint more than this, but then it looked too crisp for an old barn board. So I got out my sandpaper again and distressed it. This is the ultimate travesty in my mother’s book, akin to purchasing denim with holes in it.

At the moment, this is finished, but I am debating whether or not to distress it even more. We’ll see.

Here’s where it ended up:

Side note–I am physically incapable of writing cursive in italics, though I wish I could rock it. It just ends up making things look dizzying. So I rock the straight up and down look.

Had a productive day lately? I’ve been plowing through my to-do lists like a boss. It’s the new normal. Kenny and I wonder what we’ll do with all of our time once we don’t have a wedding to plan…but I’ve heard that time becomes even more elusive once you’re married. Thoughts?