Firewood turned DIY wall art

Today I wanted to do a recap of a recent DIY wall art project I shared on my friend, Gail’s, blog at My Repurposed Life. Gail is a sweetheart and fellow DIYer that I met at Haven two years ago. She’s recovering from surgery and needs some good, old-fashioned rest and relaxation right now.

It all started with this hunk of board I discovered on our firewood pile a few weeks ago.

Scrap board

My husband said he found it under a pile of leaves and assumed it was junk. Silly husband. 😉

It didn’t seem to be too warped, so I rescued it. I trimmed the top and bottom on the miter saw to make the length 30 1/2 inches. (I kept the width at 11 1/2 inches and the depth at about 3/4 of an inch.)

I sanded all four sides and the edges and corners with my orbital sander. Then I brushed on a coat of Minwax stain in Jacobean.

Staining-scrap-board Stained-board

While the stain was drying, I created some word art I wanted to stick on the front of it. I used Adobe Photoshop to piece together a collage of words using various fonts. (I’m sure you could create something similar using PicMonkey or Gimp.)

I made the image size 20 inches wide by 30 inches long – the largest poster size available through the Walmart photo lab (for same-day pickup). Because my wood piece was only 11 1/2 inches wide, I made sure the word art was no wider than 11 inches. (You’ll see why later.)

Creating-a-poster-in-PhotoshopI’m sure I got a few strange looks from the Walmart photo lab employees considering I had chunks of white space on both sides of my poster. But I just carefully trimmed them off at home.

DIY-wall-art-mounting-on-boardNext I mounted the word art onto my stained board using Mod Podge (matte finish). This is the part where I held my breath, because it looked like I was ruining everything!

Mod-PodgeMod-Podge-closeupI applied Mod Podge to the entire top of the photo, too. Luckily, it dried clear. I did make sure to use even strokes with my paintbrush so the texture of the glue was not too visible.

To hang the piece on the wall, I used Command™ Large Picture Hanging Strips.

Command-strips

Here’s the final result:

DIY-wood-wall-artDIY-wooden-wall-art-environmentalYou’ll notice I left about a quarter inch of the board visible on all four sides in front. I felt this gave it a more finished look. I love that you can see the wood grain on the sides.

DIY-wooden-wall-art-closeupSo there you have it … a rescued piece of firewood transformed into an inspirational family mission statement.

Have you rescued any wood lately?

I’m linking this up to Thrifty Decor Chick, Home Stories A to Z, Fluster Buster and Not Just a Housewife.

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17 Responses

  1. Joani says:

    It turned out awesome! Thanks for sharing.

  2. Lucy says:

    LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  3. Lisa says:

    Love, love, love!

  4. Patricia says:

    Beautiful! I love it!

  5. kelli says:

    Hi i love this! i’m wondering what program to use to actually make the poster? thanks

  6. Love the result – looks professional! And you made it look easy.

  7. Marlene says:

    That board after you stained it was lovely.I don’t know if I could have covered it all up like you did? But it’s nice.

  8. So resourceful! I think I know what to do with some firewood that I sometimes found at the backyard. Thanks for this great idea.

  9. Lois says:

    Your salvaged wood turned out beautiful. I tend to try to find new uses for everything I come across. I have a piece of art now over my bed that was a street sign at one time, wooden handles are now garden markers in the grand children’s garden beds.

  10. Kathleen says:

    Beautiful. I love it.

  11. Love this and love the saying. I don’t have Photoshop. Is there another way to do this.? Thanks

    • Susan says:

      Sure. You could use Gimp, a free photo editing program. I really like that one and it is very similar to Photoshop. Or probably PicMonkey would work, too. You could pretty much create this in any photo-editing software.

  12. Christine says:

    Love everything about it!

  1. November 15, 2013

    […] of firewood?  Do you burn it for heat or make something from it?  What if it really looks bad?  Check out what Susan did with her found scrap […]

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