Lansdowne Life

Weathered E wall art

by Erin Heaton

I wanted to start making some art for Elise’s playroom (even though it’s nowhere near the decorating stage). I want the tone of the art to be kid-friendly, but not overtly juvenile. Typography seemed like a good solution. Plus, I have a thing for the letter E, it being my first initial (and Elise Elliott’s first and middle).
I took a piece of wood I had laying around. (Actually, I think it was a scrap of lumber left over from my paint chip project and my coat hook project.) I gave it about four or five coats of black craft paint. This may seem like a lot, but I wanted the color to be deep and the panel is only about 11″ x 14,” so it only took a minute or two per coat.

I sifted through some fonts for an E I liked, enlarged it to about 8.5″ x 11″ and printed it out. I used a font called Wrexham Script and enlarged my E to 1060 pts.

Then I flipped the paper over and scribbled all around the edges of the E with a white pencil. That is, I scribbled on the backside of the paper. This pencil is for marking on dark fabric, but I think a white colored pencil would work too. I know it’s kind of hard to see in the photos, but using a white pencil instead of a regular one worked better with the black paint.

I centered the paper right side up on the wood panel.

Then I traced all around the E with a regular pencil. This transferred the white pencil onto the panel.

Paper removed, I had a nice white E outline to work with.

 
I filled it in with three or four coats of white paint, but it was looking a little too basic…

So I took a sander to the whole thing. It made the black parts super smooth and kind of slate-like. I wanted it to look like a weathered sign, but didn’t want it to look “sanded,” with the natural wood exposed.

Sanders have kind of weird effects on craft paint. The paint doesn’t always sand off evenly and sometimes globs of paint accummulate on the sandpaper and re-deposit themselves elsewhere, which is what happened here. It really is totally random what you end up with.

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Comments

  3. Anonymous says

    Awesome! Just what I was looking for! Going to do initials for my boys’ room. Pinterest lead me here and I’m so glad it did!