DIY Planked Wood Art Tutorial: A Guest Post from The Simple Things

I'm so excited to have a fabulous guest here at Simply Klassic Home! I'd like you to meet Kristin. (Best name ever, don'tcha think??).

Kristin (along with her hubby, Scott), has a love for DIY and shares her passion for creating a beautiful home on her blog, The Simple Things. She recently completed a complete makeover of her living room and dining room, and she's here today to share a fabulous piece of art she and her hubby created for the room.

Hello! My name is Kristin and I am guest posting from The Simple Things Blog. I have a huge love for home decorating and especially DIY projects! On my blog, you will find an array of DIY projects, recipes and a little bit of my personal life tossed in every now and again.  My husband and I own a relatively small condo, but just because it's small doesn't mean it can't be beautiful! We are constantly thinking of ways to make it more livable, organized and just plain gorgeous.

I'm sharing with you today a super easy DIY art project. It literally cost us less than $11 and is probably my favorite piece in our entire house!

Over the past month, my husband and I decided to redecorate our entire downstairs (living room and dining room). You can find the before and after pictures here.  The project wasn't totally complete and our living room was lacking a piece of art to go over our couch:

See?

We didn't like anything we found at the various home decor stores we went to, so we decided to take matters into our own hands!

Here is what we came up with:

Here's how to make it:

5 fence pieces 3.5" x 4'

Cut off the ends of the fence with a jig saw to create a jagged edge.

Distress to your hearts content! Seriously, hammers, nails, screws...anything you can get your hands on!  Go at it!

We "white washed" the boards, I just took flat latex paint and watered it down.  We used paper towels to wipe off the excess.

Once the boards are dry, align them how you want them to look on the wall.

 Take 3/4" x 1 1/2" wood.  Take 1 1/4" screws and screw into each plank.

The boards are now screwed together and we are almost ready to paint!

We bought a frame hanging kit and installed it using the directions on the package.

Ready to paint!

We used our handy-dandy projector for this next part.  Scott hand drew the word "love" because we couldn't find any fonts that we liked(yes, he is awesome).  Align the projector where you want the word and get to work!

Just simply trace the words onto the wood with whatever color paint you would like!

During this part, we realized we liked the "shabby" look of the letters not being totally colored in.

Letters colored in completely.

We really wanted the shabby look so we took sandpaper to the letters to "distress" them.

And Voila!

A perfectly shabby chic piece of art work for less than $11!

We LOVE how it turned out ;-) And I hope you do too!

If you have any questions about it, please feel free to hop on over to my blog and leave a comment!  I'd be happy to help!

Kristin

The Simple Things

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WOW! That piece of art they created is the perfect finishing touch to Kristin's living/dining room makeover. Be sure to check out the big reveal here, and show Kristin a little comment love while you're there.

Thanks, Kristin, for sharing your fabulous tutorial with us today.

I'll be back Friday with another guest post for 10 Creative Uses, and don't forget Simply Klassic Sundays (linky party) goes live at 8 pm PST Saturday night - start getting those fabulous posts ready!!

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