The Skinny on the Wood Box
Hope everyone is having a Fabulous Fourth of July weekend. Mine has been great. We had some family and friends over yesterday and had a Fun time, it was a beautiful day. Today my weekend just got even better. I have been sitting here on the patio determined not to do anything productive today so I thought I'd check in on the blogisphere. I just found out I have been featured over at Centsational Girl's BOTB for my Chalk Painted Wood Box! Wow, how cool is that! My Brother who's been hanging out today had no idea how cool that is, you can bet I filled him in.
I have had a few questions in my comments and emails so I thought I'd make a post about the details.
Where did you buy the chalk paint? I ordered it after reading a post by Shaunna at Perfectly Imperfect. She has a couple videos worth watching in that post. I just love her Southern accent. I finally just decided to splurge. Here's a link to where I ordered it from. I must say I was impressed, they shipped it right away and I had it within a couple days. It is expensive (like $45ish after shipping per quart! eek don't tell my husband) but the coffee table I want to paint with it was free so I justified it that way.
What fonts did I use? For Merlot I used Times New Roman font size 150. For the Chateau de Charli and 1992 I used Edwardian Script and I clicked on Italic to make it more slanted. I needed the Chateau part to be large so I started by creating a Word document, changed the margins to narrow, and used font size 95. To make the letters bigger I changed the setting on my printer so that it would print the one page onto three pieces of paper. You do that by hitting print, then select printer properties, finishing tab, Poster printing set to 3x3. It will actually print the one page onto 9 pages (3 across by 3 down) I just cancelled the print job after the first three printed rather then letting all the rest of the pages run through blank. Then I just taped the pages together.
Where did I get the Chateau Picture? I searched on Google Images for French wine labels and found a poster, I saved it to my pictures, then using my HP software that came with my printer I cropped just around the Chateau. Then I copied and pasted that into a word document and stretched it out (by grabbing the corner)as big as I could get it on a piece of paper. Then printed it out.
Can you explain the transfer method? scribble pencil on the back of the image and then when you place the image on your surface and trace around it with a pencil it will transfer the design. You could also use tracing paper, same concept.
I used a really small cheap artist brush to fill in the words and I was really surprised at how crisp it turned out. Like shocked actually. Now that I think about it I pushed kinda hard with the pencil and it gouged the design into the wood so that might have helped the paint stay in the lines.
For the Chateau image I used a dark brown colored pencil. So for that part I scribbled on the back with the colored pencil instead of a regular pencil then after transferring I just filled in and shaded a little.
I think that about covers it. If not feel free to email me if you want me to better explain something. Thanks for all the nice comments you made my day!
I have had a few questions in my comments and emails so I thought I'd make a post about the details.
Where did you buy the chalk paint? I ordered it after reading a post by Shaunna at Perfectly Imperfect. She has a couple videos worth watching in that post. I just love her Southern accent. I finally just decided to splurge. Here's a link to where I ordered it from. I must say I was impressed, they shipped it right away and I had it within a couple days. It is expensive (like $45ish after shipping per quart! eek don't tell my husband) but the coffee table I want to paint with it was free so I justified it that way.
What fonts did I use? For Merlot I used Times New Roman font size 150. For the Chateau de Charli and 1992 I used Edwardian Script and I clicked on Italic to make it more slanted. I needed the Chateau part to be large so I started by creating a Word document, changed the margins to narrow, and used font size 95. To make the letters bigger I changed the setting on my printer so that it would print the one page onto three pieces of paper. You do that by hitting print, then select printer properties, finishing tab, Poster printing set to 3x3. It will actually print the one page onto 9 pages (3 across by 3 down) I just cancelled the print job after the first three printed rather then letting all the rest of the pages run through blank. Then I just taped the pages together.
Where did I get the Chateau Picture? I searched on Google Images for French wine labels and found a poster, I saved it to my pictures, then using my HP software that came with my printer I cropped just around the Chateau. Then I copied and pasted that into a word document and stretched it out (by grabbing the corner)as big as I could get it on a piece of paper. Then printed it out.
Can you explain the transfer method? scribble pencil on the back of the image and then when you place the image on your surface and trace around it with a pencil it will transfer the design. You could also use tracing paper, same concept.
I used a really small cheap artist brush to fill in the words and I was really surprised at how crisp it turned out. Like shocked actually. Now that I think about it I pushed kinda hard with the pencil and it gouged the design into the wood so that might have helped the paint stay in the lines.
For the Chateau image I used a dark brown colored pencil. So for that part I scribbled on the back with the colored pencil instead of a regular pencil then after transferring I just filled in and shaded a little.
I think that about covers it. If not feel free to email me if you want me to better explain something. Thanks for all the nice comments you made my day!