Handmade Love

It's Valentine's Day and I love these three people. 

{in addition to many others, and I hope all of you know who you are}

But what I really wanted share with you guys is the gift I made for Kyle. 

It's a verse that we both love from a Mumford and Sons song.  Loooooove that verse. 

I was originally just going to find a scrap piece of wood to write a quote on but was inspired via Pinterest by this and this.  So I then decided I wanted to make the project a little bigger by putting pieces of wood together for a longer quote.  I first headed to Lowes to scope out what they had.  I ended up finding a 12 ft piece of pine for a little over 6 bucks.  I had an extremely nice employee at Lowes help me cut the 12 ft piece into four 3 ft pieces.  I also picked up a long skinny piece and had him cut that into 3 smaller pieces to hold everything together (I'll show you what I mean in a second). 

Can you see the long piece of pine he was cutting?

I got a cheap brush and some stain while at Lowes.  I just picked a random sorta dark color.  I painted the stain on the wood pretty thick, let it sit for about 15 minutes, and then rubbed it off with a rag.  I did this 3 or 4 times on each piece until I achieved the color I wanted. 

The top piece has had 2 coats, the middle piece needs to be whipped with a rag and the last piece is in it's bare form.

Brush it on.

Then rub it off.

The top piece was finished and the last three needed rubbing.

 I forgot to get a picture of the wood before I added letters, but here you can see the color pretty well.  After lots of trial and error, I decided the best way to write the letters was by cutting them out using my Cricut machine and then gluing them on.

I poured glue onto a plate and just dipped the letters in the glue.  I used looooots of glue.

My messy workspace. (a.k.a. our dining room table) 

I then took two of the smaller pieces and glued them to the back of the boards using Gorilla glue.  The pieces on the back serve to hold everything together but also for hanging purposes.

I arranged the larger pieces, turned them over and then glued the thin pieces to the back.  {I plan to add nails for extra reinforcement} 

Strong stuff.

I put books on top of the glued pieces to help it hold while drying.

And when I flipped it back over it looked like this! I am so very pleased with how this project turned out.  I really think it may be my favorite thing I've ever made.  Kyle really likes it too, so that's good. Much better than chocolate or something. :)

I hope you felt love today, whether it was Valentines related or not.