This was a Pinterest-inspired project, with a few tweaks, that I made at the beginning of the summer. I have a fascination with glass insulators and a friend of mine got a box of them at an auction and gave me a few. I started looking for some Pinspiration and found them used as a vase. I had wanted to make a personalized welcome sign for our entry for some time and thought I’d put the two together.
ombre paint with “Y” make off
I found a piece of wood above the garage and cut it to 2ft x 2 ft (after measuring where I wanted to put it). Then I sanded the edges only, as I wanted to see the texture of the wood.
I have a lot of Sherwin Williams “Colors to Go” samples from recent projects, so I just used those for the colors. I also used some slow dry blending medium because I wanted to make a gradient (light in the middle and darker at the top and bottom). The main color is “Teal Stencil”. “Darkroom” and some leftover white exterior paint were blended in to make the gradient.
Outlined with white craft paint
I used 2 inch green masking tape to mask off the Y. This didn’t work out too well, because the texture of the wood let some of the paint seep underneath (first picture). Uggh!
I decided to try to fix it by outlining with white pain. It helped a little.
Then the Sharpies came to the rescue!
Next, I chose a font, named Great Vibes, for our name and one for est. 1993. Unfortunately, I can’t remember which one I used. They were enlarged in Photoshop and printed out. I cut them to fit together and spaced them how I wanted and placed a sheet of carbon paper between the printout and board. They were taped down so they wouldn’t move.
carbon paper under printed , enlarged font
After tracing over them, I hand painted the words, very s l o w l y with a fine brush.
closeup after tracing over letters
I was pretty happy with the way it was looking and was about to start drilling the holes for the insulator, but I kept thinking something was missing. So I let it sit a week and decided it needed some interest in the two upper corners. I got out some Golden light molding paste and tinted it with the teal paint and made a textured stencil in the two corners. When it was dried, I dry brushed some gray over it to bring out the texture. I think it was just what it needed.
colors are a little off, but thos is a detail of the stencil
This is about where I realized I forgot about something! I hadn’t planned how to hang it! I wanted to make sure that it laid flat and off the wall from the siding and decided to put two vertical 1 x 1 boards down the length of each side and attach hook eyes with wire between them. I probably should have done this in the first step and screwed them on through the front and covered up the screws, but it was an afterthought. After all that work, I was worried that it wouldn’t hold up. Too excited to get into the artsy part and not thinking of functionality! (this is a common problem for me) Luckily, with some very carefully determined screw lengths and lots of liquid nails, it has held together throughout one summer. I would, however, recommend doing this before you start a project like this.
Finally, two, vertical drill holes and some wire secured the insulator.
Now, it isn’t a very big vase and there are not any holes for drainage, so I would recommend a succulent with very little watering. Hope you enjoyed my tutorial!
