Upcycled Barn Wood

These were some of my all time favorite projects to make.  They are fairly easy, I just had to be very careful making them, because as easy as they are to make, they're just as easy to mess up.  Luckily for me, I had access to a huge pile of old weathered wood from a barn my grandparents tore down long ago.  I took the four wheeler to the pile, loaded it down with wood and got to work.  Besides the wood, all you need are some paintbrushes and paint, and unless you feel like handwriting all of them, some stickers.  Note:  Handwriting them all is VERY tedious.  For me, anyways.  I get very shaky when concentrating and ended up with a LARGE pile of signs that were ruined.

One of my better free-handed signs

So head to your local craft store and stock up.  Get as many stickers of letters that you want.  I tried re-using stickers but that only works if you are very careful and I got a maximum of two uses from the stickers.  Get whatever paint colors you want.  (Just the little acrylic paint bottles that come in thousands of different colors)  They are also fairly cheap.  Only a couple bucks a bottle.

You will also need paint brushes.  I like to be over-prepared so I probably had one of every possible size.  the skinnier ones are better for free handing on the wood, I had a flat one that I found worked best for the signs like the one in the picture above.

To get started:
Pick out the quote you want to put on the piece of wood
Place the stickers down where you want them, spelling out the quote
Paint over the stickers.  How you paint over them is up to you.  If you want to paint the whole board, using a larger paint brush would be better.
Let it dry a little, then VERY CAREFULLY peel off the stickers.  I used a pin to get under the sticker without making a mark in the paint.  Note:  I learned that if I used too much paint, which I did alot, the stickers were more prone to ripping, making the process that much harder.
Let dry the rest of the way, then enjoy!

I got claw-like hangers and nailed them on the back of the signs so they would be easier to hang.

2 more finished products