DIY - Horseshoe "lucky" wooden sign

One day while skimming through Pinterest I came across a wooden sign that had the phrase LUCKY with a horse shoe for the U. I just had to do one identical to it for myself. Now I am not the most western person out there, but for a few years I did get really into horses/rodeos.

Let me get side tracked a little bit and explain how my love for horses began... Early in 2009 I begged my parents to put me in horseback riding lessons, they finally gave in, and I fell in love. I loved riding horses, and I immediately wanted one of my own. Around the beginning of August the begging began! (I was the most annoying beggar as a child, my poor parents haha!) One day after my lesson as I was taking the saddle and bridal off of the trainers horse, I remember telling my mom something along the lines of me needing one, and how I would take such great care of it. My mom must of said something a long the lines of her not knowing where to buy a horse, because my trainer said that a family that boarded their horses at the facility I took lessons at was selling their black and white paint quarter horse. At this point, my mom probably went home and begged by father to buy me the horse for my upcoming birthday the end of Septmeber. (Maybe that is where I get it from haha!). My parents just kept saying "maybe one day" or "we don't have time for a horse" etc. to keep me not suspicious. One day right before my birthday we showed up to the facility for my lesson and my trainer told me to go back and get the horse, like I did at the start of every lesson. I walked back through the stables and inside of the stall was the most beautiful horse with a bright pink bridle and a bow on its forehead. My parents ended up buying the horse that the family was selling at the facility. His name was Ajay, and he was tallest prettiest horse I had seen, probably because he was all mine haha. I kept doing lessons and 4-H after I got the horse. After getting pretty confident in my riding skills I started to do 4-H competitions , and queening in rodeos. I ended up placing in several rodeos and 4-H competitions. I had kind of had slight allergies from the beginning, nothing an allergy pill couldn't fix, but as time went on I became more and more allergic. It got to the point that I would have to sit in the car while my mom got my horse all cleaned up and ready for a show, and I mean bathed, brushed, saddled, foot covers on, chest piece, bridle on, hair braided, hooves painted, everything. Once my horse was ready she would bring it by the gate, I would get on and go do my pattern, once I was done I would jump off and get back in the car. Even doing all that I would still get itchy, a runny nose, puffy eyes, drowsy, breakout in hives, and sneeze every 10 seconds. No allergy pill was helping at this point, and it was becoming nearly impossible. Due to my allergies, and how busy my life was becoming as I got older we decided to sell my horse. We ended up selling him to my trainer, who still currently has him.

Ok ok, done being side tracked now, that itself was a blog post probably haha! Here is the picture I found of the Pinterest one... 

Now lets finally get around to the tutorial part, so you can try it!

I went to my local Ace Hardware (like a Home Depot / Lowes) and had them cut me a 2.5 foot piece of wood and bought a horseshoe. I  than brought them home and sanded the edges of my board and put a light coat of stain on it. The stain I used was MINEWAX, color Early American. While that was drying I went onto Microsoft Word and found a font like I liked. Once I found the font I enlarged it so each letter was on its own page (size 72 for me). You can scale it according to the size of your board too. I printed the letters off and checked to see if the board was dry yet. The board ended up taking an additional 30 minutes, 45 minutes total to completely dry. 

You than take a pencil (not mechanical) and trace the outside of the letters, on the back side. Make sure you do not do it on the front (side with ink) or the letters will be backwards. You will need to do this fairly dark so there is enough to transfer onto the board. Be careful touching it after you trace it, to avoid smudging.

Once you have traced the outline of all of the letters you will want to space them out evenly on the board, including the horseshoe U. Once they are spaced out to your liking you will want to tape down the papers. Once the papers are taped on you will nail in the horseshoe with flat top nails. I put 2 nails per side, one at the very top and one at the very bottom. I did it that way so it wouldn't tilt and was very secure. 

You than get the same pencil and scribble over the letter on the front side. This will imprint what you did on the back side onto the board. 

(^^^ I know this is very faint, but this shows what it will look like once transferred over.)

At this point all you have to do now is paint inside the letters on the board. The color I used for my board was BEHR - Eggshell Creme left over from my  DIY - Stencil Table. Here is my final project! I cannot wait to put this baby up when I have a house of my own.

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DIY - Stencil Table

I recently started going through a phase where I would watch KSL everyday for cheap furniture I could redo. Not that I have a cute little house to put them in yet or anything, just for fun and experience. Typically all of my projects just go into my storage unit. Haha! This one day I came across a table and a set of four matching chairs. Since it was only $65 for the set and I did not have a dinning set yet I was all over it. My boyfriend and I went and picked it up from the lady that same day and I was already brainstorming what I was going to do. I was searching through Pinterest all night and came across a stenciled table. I completely fell in love and thought I would give it a try! Here is a tutorial on how I did mine…

Sanding completely sucks, but it MUST be done. This table had some sort of laminate over the top and you have to make sure to get it all off or else the paint will not stick on the wood. I sanded with multiple different grits, high to low of course. I even sanded the bottom of the table as there were marks from the previous owners children. In the photo below notice the far left looking shiny (laminate) and the far right being not shiny at all.

After searching through many different sites for stencils that didn’t cost $80+ I came across a company called iStencil. They have multiple different stencils, some cute some not so much. I found the one I liked and decided on going with a 11x11. It only ended up costing me $15 which was a steal compared to the others sites I had looked at. The entire stencil is 11x11 but the design is only 9.5 at the widest points. I would recommend the 11x11 if you want it smaller like mine, but I also the think 16x16/18x18 would have been cute as well. I think it really depends on the stencil and how busy it is.

I went to home depot and picked out all of my colors I wanted and the tools I would need. I decided to go with the BEHR Eggshell Cream for the stencil/legs to counteract the dark stain. I applied it on the stencil/legs with the 4” foam roller brush, and a small 1” foam stick for edges/touch ups. I used a gel stain for the top of the table, which I have never used before. It was similar yet very different than regular stain. With regular stain you can apply it and wipe off the excess to achieve your desired color, with the gel stain it coats on similar to a coat of paint. Because of that I did use a liquid stain I had leftover in my garage from a different project for the distressing on the legs. The gel stain was very difficult to get on even and a turned out a little too dark, so if I were to do it again I would probably go with the liquid stain for all of it. In the pictures below you can see how it went on really dark. I lightly sanded it down with 600 grit sand paper (very very fine grit). On the legs I did 3 coats of the Eggshell Cream because they were a little bit lighter than I wanted. Once they were completely dry I antiqued the edges by using a 450 grit piece of sand paper to rub on the edges and some of the flat parts.

Once I received my stencil I practiced on a piece of wood to get the hang of it before doing it on the real table. The stencil comes with grooves on the outside of the cut out parts to help you line it up. I measured it out so I started right in the middle with the first stencil. After the first strip was done I would connect the stencil edge grooves and start the next row. For mine I did 3 rows and ½’s on the side. The stencil would get paint on the bottom and the grooves would get covered every three or so squares so I would frequently wash it completely and keep going. Let me warn you now… The edges suck! (as you can probably tell from the picture above). I had many mess ups and had to keep sanding them off and trying again. Practice makes perfect!

Once the top was completely dry I applied the gel stain with a “all paints” bristle brush pictured above. Again since it was darker than I wanted I lightly sanded it with 600 grit sand paper.  You will want to make sure the stain is completely dry or it will get lumpy when sanding. I wiped the table down with a cloth frequently when sanding to avoid the dust getting sanded back into the table.

Once the sanding was done I applied 4 thick coats of Polyurethane with a 4” foam stick brush. You will want to make sure you do not forget to apply it to the sides as well. I applied mine a little bit thicker on the sides due to them being roughed up easier, that just personal preference though. After that was completely dried I was done! Here is the finished product! Now time for the chairs, that’s going to be a whole other project I am not quite sure I am ready for. (;

Enjoy, xoxo.

DIY Deer Head Pallet Decoration

The past few days I have had gotten kind of bored looking for stuff to do...well...besides laundry, cleaning, and all that lame stuff. I decided that in my 'spare time' I was going to finish a craft I had started a while ago. I stumbled upon this idea on Pinterest a few months back and fell in love with it. I figured it would be so cute for my future house or even my future husbands 'man cave'. The original picture I found on Pinterest had some pastel colors on the wood, others had glitter on the heads, etc. I decided that to make them a little more manly I would stain the wood a dark color and do just a plain black head. Here is how my project turned out..

Pretty adorable if you ask me (; Want to make one of your own? 

Here is step by step instructions of how I made mine!

I first went online and searched on Google for "deer outline" "deer head" "deer antlers" etc. The specific site that I found my two images was on freepick.com! They were free downloadable vector files that I just clicked on and downloaded. The images I used for mine were...

&

I got my pallet from a friend of mine, but I know you can usually get a free one at some liquor stores, Walmart, Home Depot, etc. I will explain how I put the images from online to the boards a little bit down the line. Anyways, here is what my pallet looked like at the start...

Oh and here is the cute boy helping me rip it apart cause I am so weak. Lol.

I just had to throw a photo of my adorable boyfriend in here somewhere. He was such a help making these and giving me ideas of what would work best for them. I am glad he puts up with me and all of my weird projects.(if he is reading..) You are a doll Brayd!

We used a hammer and a crow bar to (gently) pull the top pieces of wood off. If you do it too rough the wooden piece may split down the middle, which gives you major slivers. Once I pulled all of them off I chose the best pieces, in my opinion. I kept 2-3 additional boards in case one broke and for the backings of the sign. 

I took many pieces of various grit sand papers and sanded them down until they were all the same color and smooth.

Brayden used a hand saw and a table saw to cut them in half. I used the nail marks in the middle as a guide of where to cut in half. After I cut down the middle of the boards I sanded those edges down. That made them not sharp and it also made it so you couldn't see any marks from the screws that were used in the middle. Once I placed out what 5 pieces of the boards I was wanting for each side I took 2 more of them for the back (the uglier ones haha). I lined them up vertically placing the 5 boards on the top making sure they lined up correctly. I used black 3/4 inch screws to attach them to the boards on the back. The ratio I did was #1-2 screws, #2-1 screws, #3-2 screws, #4-1 screws, #5-2 screws, just to give it a little more detail. (See three pictures below). I also did it that way so the board in the middle that was a little bigger than the rest ended up with 2 screws and is a little more secure. The reason I put the two back pieces on was not only to hold the boards together, it allows for the hole thing to hang evenly off of the wall.

I than took a paint brush and a rag to wipe some stain over the top to give it a little bit of rustic look. The stain that I used is from the brand MINWAX the color is #203 - Early American. The next step is printing off your pictures. I sent my images in as 11x14 photo prints to my local print shop, proditialphotos.com. 

Pro Digital Photos is the cutest print shop ever! I highly suggest you go checkout their website if you haven't already! You will fall in love. Once I got my prints I cut them out leaving no trim/extra along the outer edges.

I taped them to my boards and traced the images very lightly with a pencil. (See below)

Once I traced the images I than laid down a sheet and took my can of black paint and painted inside the pencil lines. The brand of paint I used was Sherwin Williams, color Black Onyx - Matte. I didn't go and buy this specific brand of black paint, this is an old can we had lying around the house from a previous project. I let that dry for about an hour or so. I than went and took a piece of a lighter grit sand paper and lightly sanded over the black paint. This gave them kind of a roughed up / rustic look. Once I felt like they were sanded to my satisfaction, I put a light coat of matte MINEWAX polyurethane over the top just to kind of seal the look. 

After that is all dried, you are done!

Enjoy, xoxo.