Tag: trace

Craft Projects

Patriotic Cornhole Boards

Jessica Smith

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My step dad is super handy (the understatement of the year) and built my little sister a set of cornhole boards last year. He painted them white so she could spruce them up with a design of her own. Last weekend she came over to paint them — they turned out awesome! (Sorry — No tutorial on the actual boards in this post since I wasn’t a part of the construction.)

Emily used paint from Michaels for her boards. She taped off her stripes and drew on her stars before painting each board. She even painted around each star by hand, which I thought was super impressive. DISCLAIMER: Only one star was harmed (read: painted over) in the creation of these boards.

Two coats on each, and she was d-o-n-e done! The are so cute, don’t ya think?

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The only thing cuter than her patriotic boards (and my garden behind them) is Em!

Cornhole1I guess craftiness runs in the family 🙂

We will be using these boards at our Memorial Day picnic/Em’s birthday celebration this weekend!

Christmas, Craft Projects, Gift Idea, Holiday, Pallet Projects

Mini Anchor Sign

Jessica Smith

One of my really good friends love to sail and is soon to be sailing a boat in the Caribbean with her hubby — what a neat vacation idea!

I wanted to make her something for Christmas so I grabbed a leftover piece of pallet wood and brought it inside to make a sign with an anchor on it.

Pallet wood is really…. splintery. So I sanded and sanded and sanded. And when I thought I was finished, I wasn’t, so I sanded some more.

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When the wood was smooth enough to work with, I sketched an anchor onto it. It wasn’t pretty, but it was good enough.

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Nice anchor, huh? I didn’t care about the terrible sketch because I filled the entire thing with gray and black paint. Then, I wrote her last name on the sign.

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With the sign painted, I needed to drill holes big enough to pass a small rope through, so I busted out the drill and created two holes at the top.

Then, I used a water-based stain to color the wood. I’ve never used water-based stain before, but I like it a lot. The wood soaks it up right away and there is a huge variety of colors to choose from. The color I picked for the sign was Minwax’s Driftwood stain.

I only used one coat for the small sign, then I let it dry overnight.

Then next day I touched up some of the paint, mainly the black lines, and added rope and an anchor button so my friend could hang her sign.

Here’s the finished product:
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I gave her the sign yesterday and she really liked it. Yay!
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