Barn wood Autumn Porch Sign

Dressing up your home for the different holidays and seasons can sometimes seem like a daunting task AND it can be downright expensive to buy everything from other sources.  Here is a super easy project that you can do on your own.  All you need is some barn wood (or any new wood), paint and time!  And seriously, won’t you feel proud of yourself every time you see it knowing that YOU did it!  There’s something about that accomplishment that makes us all feeling amazing 🙂

First gather your supplies – don’t do what I do.  I NEVER have everything I need within reach.  Trust me when I say it saves time when you prepare with everything you need beforehand.  Projects always take me longer because of my lack of preparation – and the fact that I can’t stay focused on any one task for any length of time.  Hence this project – it’d been done for a month BUT you’re just now seeing this post.  Just keeping it real folks!

Supplies

barn wood, gloves, paper towels, paintbrushes, paint, sandpaper

That’s it!  Super easy so far, huh!

So, after you have your supplies, you’re all ready to go.

Stain the board and let dry for a couple hours unless you are using  water-based stain that dries faster.  I personally like this Minwax stain. The color is absolutely beautiful when you apply it to barn wood.  When he stain is dry, you can dry-brush a paint color on.  Dry-brushing is super simple.  Don’t let it scare ya!  Simply put a small amount of paint on your brush and then rub it all back off onto a paper towel.  This will leave a small amount of paint on the dry brush without the bulk of the wet paint.  Gently brush color onto the barnwood where you want accent colors.  You can use one color or numerous colors.  It’s all up to you.  That’s what so awesome about DIY!!

Next up – letters!  You can free-hand the letters or use these stencils.  They’re heavy-duty and will last for several projects.  Line up the letters according to your style.  I left a little bit of room at the top so that I could add a ribbon when I was done.  And I only had one “U” in the stencil set so I had to use another letter for placement reasons.  Just make sure you lay it out correctly so you don’t have to go back and repeat steps.  Again…learn from my mistakes.  I always make mistakes.  Trace the letters and then paint them!  Easy peasy so far isn’t it.  I’m telling you – this project is just time!  And if you don’t have that, then I can make one for ya 😉

Stain

Dry Brush Color

Dry Brush

Laying out stencil

Trying stencil

Stencil

Paint colors

Sand after all painting is done!

Next up, I accented my piece with pumpkins and flowers and leaves.  Don’t let this freak you out!  They’re super simple.  For the pumpkin, you’re just going to paint and overlap ovals!  No joke!  Try it – you’ll be so pleased with how it turns out.  For the stem you’re doing to add a curbed triangle and then some curly-q’s.  I did my stem green with a little bit of brown but you could definitely do brown.

For the flowers all you’re going to do is paint a messy circle!  Don’t get it perfect because let’s face it, we’re not perfect.  Once you have the base for your flower, you can dry-brush some other colors onto the top.  Same concept that we talked about earlier.  Again, add some leaves and curly-q’s adding extra color as you want to.  For the middle “stamen” of the flowers you simply use the opposite side of the paintbrush – the handle 🙂  Dip it in some paint and viola!!  You have perfect dots!!

After it was all painted to my liking and dry, take a rough sandpaper and rough it up some. You could definitely keep the lines “crisp” and skip this step but since it was barn wood, I wanted the rustic look.  I have a covered porch so I did not seal it but if it’s going to be in the weather and you want it to last for several seasons then I definitely recommend using an outdoor sealer.

Add a burlap or regular ribbon to the top and stand back and enjoy the labors of your love!

Here are a few other ideas of wording you can use for this project:

Harvest

Joy

Spooky

Believe

Love

America

Easter 

What have you made new for the season?  I’d love to know if you plan on making one of these or if you have and have created your own spin on it!!

Happy creating!!!!

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