I am going to be selling my polymer clay creations at Oddmall: Emporium of the Weird for the first time on November 19-29, 2016 at Everett Community College, Everett, WA, so in between making things to offer, I was trying to come up with ways to stage my booth.
One of the things I definitely need is a signage. At first I thought I'd order one, get it all nice and professionally done but research told me that it could be pricey... and I did not really want to add more expenses to this venture. So my research turned into a how to make one.
We have some leftover wood from a previous project, so I gathered a few of those and started to gage how big I want the sign to be. I settled on two planks, about a half a foot long each in three layers. I was hesitant at first that mere wood glue would do the trick but good, ol' hubby assured me it was fine. So after choosing the sides with the grain I wanted to show, I started gluing in between the planks. After that, I took some shims and used those in pairs: one pair on the left, another pair on the middle and yet another on the right to be the backing, weighed them down with books and left them to dry till the next day. Hub sawed off the extras after they were all set.
One of the things I definitely need is a signage. At first I thought I'd order one, get it all nice and professionally done but research told me that it could be pricey... and I did not really want to add more expenses to this venture. So my research turned into a how to make one.
We have some leftover wood from a previous project, so I gathered a few of those and started to gage how big I want the sign to be. I settled on two planks, about a half a foot long each in three layers. I was hesitant at first that mere wood glue would do the trick but good, ol' hubby assured me it was fine. So after choosing the sides with the grain I wanted to show, I started gluing in between the planks. After that, I took some shims and used those in pairs: one pair on the left, another pair on the middle and yet another on the right to be the backing, weighed them down with books and left them to dry till the next day. Hub sawed off the extras after they were all set.
There were so many color combinations to choose from. I could go with wood stain on white, wood stain on orange. White on black. Gray on white. Orange on Black. Orange on white. White on Orange. Black on Orange.
So to check, I made a small color tests on a couple of shims. Hmmm... nope... I like it but not that much. I still prefer the natural wood look.
So I decided to stain the wood. It's been rainy, and the big storm of the century was supposed to have whirled through that weekend, which, thankfully, it did not. So I left the stain to dry in front of the heater for a day. While waiting for it to dry, I looked up ways of aging the wood and I saw Reality Daydream's video (see it here). She colored the wood first then stained it. I really liked how it looked so I decided it's not too late, I can color over my stain and then stain it again.
I chose blue, black, yellow and an off white color and just went randomly with it, no premixing or anything.
After it dried, I sanded it by hand then applied another coat of stain. It was perfect! I love, love, love how it turned out! Look at those colors. And the second coat of stain just made it look darker and richer.
With all the colors and that rich wood stain, I decided to just go classic white. So up next was painting the name on. Using a yellow pastel pencil, which was what I had on hand, I wrote OrangeJar.com in my loose, informal script.
And here it is:
I am going to go over the text again, bulk it up in some areas and make some of those rounded areas more rounded. Also, I'm currently debating whether I want it to have a crackle paint effect but I'm not decided yet. Overall, I like how it looks. I think it's going to be a good first signage. What do you think?
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