"Antique" Sign

A few days ago, I posted about picking up a holiday decoration at Goodwill... I bought it for the wonderful board underneath the hand-painted Christmas greeting. I have yet to actually remove the painted teddy bear and text... so I am using the reverse side to create a new "antique" sign for my studio.

I have wanted a sign that said "Antiques" for awhile, but it wasn't until last week when I heard the term "Antiques and Bygones" on a wonderful program called Salvage Hunters (think UK version of American / Canadian Pickers) that I knew I wanted to use it for my sign!

The first step was getting the proper graphics; so of course I headed over to The Graphics Fairy and hunted around for something ornate for the background / frame. I found an antique sheet music graphic and changed it up a bit for my use, adding text and a pointing hand image too.

I will admit, I didn't know how the heck I was going to transfer this onto the board. I reviewed Karen's DIY site on the many transfer techniques, and after trying the "wax paper method" without success (no matter what I did, the paper would jam up my printer), I decided to try method #1 using pastels! I flipped my final printed page over and rubbed the back with black pastel.

Then I taped it in place on the board, and using a fine embossing tool (she used a ballpoint pen), I traced the image onto the board.

It worked great! Because I want this to look aged, it didn't have to be perfect.

Next I got out all my black pens, black Copics, ballpoints and even Sharpies to trace over the pastel rubbed onto the board.

Voila! I am really pleased with the result:

This shelf is where it will stay... I was going to thread some old rope through the holes, but I think I shall just leave them be. To me, it looks like where the old sign would have hung from a bracket! ;)

A really fun, easy project that didn't take long at all to complete, thanks to Karen at The Graphics Fairy!

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