Love Letters

After hanging the book baskets in Emma and Owen's room, the wall space above them was looking a bit bleak.  I wanted to make some large art to hang above them and came across some inspiration from The Green Palette's instagram feed.

Brent and I set out to make something similar by first sketching our letter templates onto a piece of 1/4 inch plywood.  Using the table saw and a jig saw, Brent cut them out and I sanded them.

Now that we had a template, we wanted to layer a different type of wood on top.  Luckily, we had a 6 foot pallet in our shop!  Brent disassembled it and cut the pallet boards into a few different widths.

To attach the pallet boards to the template, we used a little glue, then laid our piece of pallet board on top, flipped it over and put a nail through it with the air gun.

When all the letters were done, I gave them a coat of Walnut stain.

I wanted them to have a little color so Emma and I brushed on three different colors of blue/grey paint.

 We put the darkest color over all of the horizontal lines to make them stand out more.

We alternated the other two colors of blue/grey on each plank.

After the paint was dry, I sanded each letter to remove some paint and expose the texture of the pallet wood.

 A quick coat of Van Dyke Brown Glaze always seems to tie everything together.  In the photo below, the left side has been glazed and the right has not.

The letters didn't feel finished at this point, so we chose to outline each letter with a small piece of trim.  After the trim was applied, I brushed on a coat of sealer to darken the wood tone a bit.

To hang them, we nailed in some of these clips...

Hanging them proved to be a bit tricky...but we finally got them level.

 I didn't plan on this, but the colors in the letters actually matches the color of the baskets perfectly.

 I guess you could say we all "LOVE" our new art :)