On the fence about outdoor décor

Surfing Pinterest inspired me to make some artwork for the backyard. Hunter had recently completed a fence project and there was some scrap lumber leftover. Stapling the wood together made some nice size canvases to play with.

The project combined two popular “pins” into one finished piece. These were how to distress painted wood and to make plant silhouette artwork. I won’t go into details describing how to do these techniques because I think the other websites do a great job but here is a brief summery of my steps:

I first painted the boards (6 total) a base color; 3 yellow & 3 green. I then coated one side of some plant cuttings with spray adhesive and arranged each onto a board. Next step was to carefully paint the board a second color using the plants like a stencil. (Note: Unlike the tutorial, I used latex paint and not spray paint because it was what I had on hand in the colors I liked.) I also added some random brush strokes of a third color just to add a bit more variation. Once the painting was done, I peeled off the plants and let the boards dry thoroughly overnight. The next day I did a little bit of paint touch up, adding highlights to some of the plant images. Then I used an electric sander to distress the boards; removing some of the layers of paint and in some places I took the paint completely off exposing plain wood. The final step of distressing/aging the wood was to lightly brush on a dark wood stain with a cloth. To protect the finished artwork I added a coat of polyurethane.

The only thing I would have done differently would be making the plants more firmly attached to the boards. It was very tedious to paint around them; often the wet brush would lift the leaves as I painted and made a mess out of the stenciled image. After applying the glue I laid a piece of cardboard on top of the plants and then stacked heavy objects on top of the cardboard (like you would do to press flowers). This worked well but I should have been more patient and left them on there for more than an hour (perhaps overnight would have been better). The more firmly the plant was adhered the easier it was to paint over them.

Overall I think the project turned out great and am really happy with how they look on the fence.