She wanted an anniversary/valentine's day present for her husband centered around a love/marriage theme. And she needed size gigantor. (6ftx2.5ft) to be exact and a rustic red finish. I would have loved to have a large sheet of beat up plywood still on hand that size, but I didn't, and in the end I was so glad.
I started with several pieces of nice, smooth pine boards of varying widths, and used the kreg jig to secure them together. In retrospect I used a few too many holes and screws, but I did want to make sure it was solid.
Then I flipped it over and went to town distressing it. I beat it up an took my angle grinder to it to rough up the ends and do a lot of damage. Then I slathered it with a blue base coat...
and added in some greens for some more dimension.
The next step was giving that a good light sanding, and over sanding in strategic places to reveal the wood underneath. After that I mixed together some paint remnants to get just the right red.
then more sanding to reveal some of that lovely blue!
Then we were ready for words. I created a mock up in Adobe InDesign and with the help of a projector, got everything on there just right. I used a paint pen to do the basic outline, then went in and painted in all the lettering. When that was all dry, I gave it another quick sanding, with emphasis on the already worn places for consistency. Shar had a great idea of adding her kids handprints to the sign, so they came over one afternoon to add that. When it was all dry and sanded just right I gave it a good coat of polyurethane to seal the deal. Here's the finished product!
