Better late than….

The funny thing is my son never exhibited much interest in football during high school. He was in the marching band and at his school that was the cool thing.  But when we moved to the Baltimore area, he had several friends who indoctrinated encouraged him in becoming a Ravens fan. Since we’ve moved from there, he is still a die hard Ravens fan. So I made this wall sign for him for Christmas and his birthday and another Christmas and birthday.

In the spirit of full disclosure, this project took me about two years from concept to full execution. It’s not that it was hard or even complicated, but I kept doing only a portion of the project and then coming back to do the next step months later. I know that’s ridiculous, but I just couldn’t seem to get it together. So, don’t worry that this is a difficult project, you just have to stay focused.

Supplies:

2 10×20 boards (deciding how big to make the boards is what took the longest time)

2 boards for securing the large boards together

screws

Gray stain (I recommend using latex gloves with this)

Paint brushes and plenty of rags.

Acrylic paint in the team colors (look closely the image also contains black, white, and red)

Yellow paint pen

Miss Mustard Seed Furniture Wax in clear and the Antiquing wax.

To create the sign, my husband assembled the boards. Next, I painted the boards with a gray stain. This is a messy, messy process.Wear gloves or you will have lovely gray finger nails for a while (not that that happened to me).  I immediately wiped the stain off with rags so that the wood grain would show through. I wanted an aged wood look, not solid gray boards.

I found the image I wanted online and increased the size. And increased the size several times, taping pieces together until it fit the space.  Actually, I used  three images. I used one as a color reference and the second is a line drawing which made it easier to transfer the image with transfer paper. And the third helped me draw the oval shaped behind the Raven. I use a red ink pen for transferring. It makes seeing where you have transferred the image easier and helps avoid that one line you missed.

I painted in the image using acrylic paints and I outlined the word Ravens with a yellow paint pen. Believe me, that was much easier than trying to paint a narrow straight line with a brush.

After it had dried (and several weeks later) I wiped clear furniture wax over the entire sign and antiquing wax on the corners and edges. I don’t think you can really see much difference, but I noticed the wax helped the board color look less flat and brought out the wood grain more.

The final product appears more blue in the photo than it actually is. It really is Ravens purple.My original intention was to sand the image down to give it an aged look and put heavier antiquing wax over the whole sign. My son, though, wanted the brighter image so I left it as is.

Guess what’s coming next? Well, my husband and son-in-law are Redskins fans. So…maybe two years from now I’ll have them done. Better late than…

Thanks for reading,

Celeste

p.s. Due to all that NFL licensing stuff, an item like this is for personal use, not selling.