White washed wooden sign

This Christmas, I made a few DIY gifts. One of them was this wooden sign for my sister. My sister and her boyfriend live in an awesome house right on a lake. The house itself has a ton of character. The backyard is huge and has a nice little pier out on the water, perfect for enjoying the scenery or hopping into one of their kayaks! My sister hasn't lived there long, so she's working on adding decor and homey touches. I thought it would be perfect to give her a gift that would add to the decor! I chose to create a sign incorporating their street name which coincidentally describes what they see out of their window!

To create the sign, I cut a piece of leftover fence picket from my DIY bar cart. (These fence pickets are super cheap, and I recommend having several on hand if you make lots of signs, like I do!) I sanded it smooth, just as I did for the burlap sign. Then I gave it two coats of DecoArt's Chalky Finish paint in "yesteryear." (Bear with me.. I had to take these pictures on a dark rainy day!)

Next, I created a white wash using DecoArt's acrylic paint mixed with water. I used a ratio of two parts paint to one part water. Then I brushed the mixture over the entire board and wiped away excess using a Handi wipe.

Once dry, I started working on my text. I found a font combination I liked using the fonts "Everafter" and "Chalk Hand Lettering." I printed the text, and cut it to size. To transfer the text, I shaded the back of the paper with a pencil, flipped it back over, and traced the letters to reveal an outline of text on the wood. For more details on how to do this step, see my text transfer page.

Then, I shaded in the outline using my favorite Marvy Uchida marker. A permanent marker would also work well.

After filling in the letters, I felt like the text was too bold, so I ended up doing one more coat of white wash using the same technique as above. Just make sure the ink is dry first so that it doesn't smear when you paint over it.

Adding that extra coat of white wash created the perfect rustic look!!

Like this sign? Check out the rest of my projects using this text transfer technique!

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