Weathered Wood and Napkin Wall Art

I love working with scrap wood to create art so I'm always happy when friends give me their 'scraps'.  These pieces of wood were given to me by my good friend, Rhonda.  She's rescued a lot of things from the 'burn pile' for me!

For this project I did a white wash on the wood using watered down chalk paint.  You don't need to do this but when working with napkins, I think a lighter background shows off the pattern of the napkins better.

After separating the napkin (I used the 'hand towel' size since one completely covered this piece of wood but you can certainly just use torn pieces of napkins as well.) plys, you'll have the very thin, printed part of the napkin.  I applied a think coat of Mod Podge to the wood, laid the napkin down and applied another layer of Mod Podge.

Sometimes your wood may have holes or in this case, a groove.  Just pat the napkin into the sunken area using a small brush to fill in. Don't worry if it tears . . . that's perfectly fine!

After it's dried, simply use a sanding block or emery board in a downward motion to remove excess napkin from the edges.

I wanted a really smooth surface to paint on so I sanded several times.  This gives a really nice, weathered look.  When you're finished, people will think you painted the flowers/pattern onto the wood!  

Print your words on computer paper and adjust size. Always choose a fairly clean, simple font that you'll be able to paint.  Insert graphite paper underneath (graphite facing down onto the wood), trace and transfer the outline of the letters onto the wood.

Once it's all transferred, you're ready to paint.  I use plain, acrylic paint and a #4 round brush.  To get nice, smooth lines, dip the tip of your brush in water, then the paint and drag your brush on paper to remove excess paint.  Simply follow your lines and then fill in!

Here's a good example of sanding down so you actually have some of the white washed wood showing through.

You don't need to seal your piece but I like to since it makes it easy to wipe off dust, etc. and keep it clean. 

For this project I used Minwax Wipe-On Poly and just applied it with a clean rag.

Ready to hang artwork for just pennies and everyone who has seen this thought I actually painted the flowers on!  Uh, no.  I'm not that talented!!