Our dining room at the Plaid House was pretty lonely. I needed more quick art work like I did in the living room. I had the design of this piece floating in the back of my mind, and I thought it would be perfect for the dining room. But I was trying to use my luan that I had on hand, and a large piece of stained luan just wouldn’t look too nice. So I compromised. I tried a reverse stencil. Now although I would love to have a vinyl cutting machine, I just can’t justify dropping the bucks on it. When I found this printable vinyl, I knew I could easily create one by hand.
And since I was crazy short on time, I created a painted frame and plan to add a frame around the edge in the future.
Steps:
- Size out your word. I sized mine in Microsoft Excel. The font is called “fox in the snow”, and the ornaments are nothing more than parentheses, to which I added hash marks while cutting out. My word and parentheses took 4 sheets of vinyl.
- After printing, I carefully cut the letters out by hand.
- I stained the luan with Puritan Pine, using a relatively dry rag and rubbing the stain into the luan.
- To save time, I didn’t frame it out yet. Instead, I taped off a border, then laid my letters and ornaments onto the board. I taped the letters down with painters tape while I got them centered, then pulled the backing off the vinyl piece by piece.
- I made about a 50/50 mix of paint and water. A little goes a LONG ways. I worked in sections, brushing the paint on, then rubbing it in with a paper towel. I did the entire board, then immediately did a second coat. It’s really just preference of how transparent you want the wash to be and how much water is in your mix.
- Pull off the vinyl and hang!
7. Pull off the vinyl and hang!
Now that I’ve tried this project, I definitely have a few others I’d like to try… I know I still have PLENTY of luan left! If you give it a try, definitely let me know how it turns out!
-Marianne
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