Easy(ish) Art

 

These were some relatively easy pieces that I did for wedding gifts.  They were easy to do but a bit time consuming.  Each one was about 16×20 inches and they were painted on slats of dog ear fencing.  Here are the steps I took to make these.

1. The first thing I did to make these was put together 3 pieces of pine dog ear fencing.  I used my Kreg jig and joined these every 6 inches.  Then I cut the joined pieces perpendicular to the slats. The fence pickets are about 6 feet long and I can cut 3 decent size pictures from the joined fencing.
2. Sand, sand and sand.  Fencing is rough.  These needed a little one on one time with some sandpaper to handle them without getting splinters everywhere
3. I whitewashed the slats for the jar pic.  This was about 1:4 white acrylic paint to water ratio.  I painted it on and then wiped off most of the excess.  I did a similar technique with the Founders growler but I used burnt umber acrylic instead of the white.  This can be done with a water based stain, but it doesn’t work well with oil based stains.  The reason is because there needs to be some absorption in the wood to transfer the image nicely and oil based stains tend to seal the wood
4. I reversed the images and blew them up to fit the wood pieces.
5.  The Ball jar graphic I got from thegraphicsfairy.com.  I placed the backwards image on the wood and used citrasolv to transfer the image onto the wood like this method https://snapguide.com/guides/transfer-images-using-citrasolv-natural-solvent/.
6. For the growler, I blew up a photo and used tracing paper to transfer the outline and wording and then transferred it onto the wood.  This is a good way to do it, but I used a white charcoal stick http://www.wikihow.com/Trace-Using-Only-Tracing-Paper-and-Pencil-Lead-for-Visual-Artists
7. I traced over the transferred images.  For the Ball jar, I just used a black sharpie to trace over the image.  For the Founder’s growler, I used a white sharpie paint marker.
8. After that, the Founder’s growler was done.  For the Ball jar, I watered down some aqua colored acrylic paint and painted in the jar.  Voila!  Two easy art pieces for the bride and groom.

This isn’t my typical type of painting, but I loved how they turned out.  I want to make a jar for my own kitchen, now!