First Love Wall Art

Escagedo Woodworking
by Escagedo Woodworking
4 Materials
$20
3 Hours
Medium
This is a Wall Art piece called "First Love". This is a great project with lots of shabby Chic, Country and sweet vibes. A boy handing flowers to the girl he is falling for. Let's show you how to make it. If you'd like to hear the story of my first love, check out the video. It has both my personal story and all the steps of how I made this wall art decor piece.
The video will take you through all the steps I took to make this piece. I also share my private 'first love' story. Some moments in live, you never forget.
3 wood boards 1x3
The first step is to get your hands on 3 boards. These are pine and I reclaimed them from outside. I gave them a sanding to smooth out the really high spots. Even so, I left the pine boards looking rough because we want this project to have a vintage, worn look.
Wood Stains
So we have 3 boards. I will use 2 different stain colors for the 2 outer boards and I'll leave the center board it's natural color. Here I'm using Bleached Blue and Gunstock stains.
Applying Wood Stain
Applying wood stain is easy. You can use a paper towels or anything you's use for regular paint. If you want a light tone, you apply the stain just once. If you'd like it to be darker, you can re-apply til you achieve the color you want. For this project I just did one pass. Remember to wipe off the excess stain with a clean towels or rag.
3 boards stained different colors
We have our 3 boards stained and they look great! Let's got to the next step...
Glue up the 3 boards
I run a bead of wood glue on the edges of the boards and press them together. Then I let the piece sit for 30 minutes to dry. A good tip is to place a sheet of paper on your work surface. In my case I used wax paper. There will be a little bit of glue drip, so this tip keeps your work area clean.
3 boards glued
We now have our backer glued and dried. It looks really nice. Now let's create the scene of a boy handing a girl flowers.
Print out your silhouette
I print out a silhouette, in this case our 2 young lover. This is the scene I want to re-create for our wall art project. Let's continue...
Wrap the image with packing tape
I wrapped the silhouette printout with packing tape. This will keep our design in place while we cut out the shapes.
Scroll Saw
I'm using a Scroll Saw to cut out the shapes. This is probably the safest of saws you can use. Scroll Saws use thin blades so you can make turns and cut out shapes you'd think were impossible. The tool is inexpensive on the lower price range ones. The are pretty compact and again, a really neat tool that's relatively safe. Let's see how the cut out came out in the next step.
Cut outs
They look great. See how much detail I was able to get?
Painting the cut outs
I decided to paint the cut outs in white. Before we attach the 2 lovers to our backer, we need to do one more thing...
Bracing
I'll add these thin pieces of wood to add support to the boards we glued up. I just add a bead of wood glue and set the thin strips on the back as you can see in the picture. Once it's dried, I can tack hardware and display it on the wall.
First Love Wall Art Finished
Here it is! We've created a beautiful, romantic and innocent scene. This would look really nice in so many rooms. I bet this will give you some great ideas of your own. Check out the video at the top for inspiration. If you'd like this piece, I have it up on my Etsy store. I'll leave a link.
First Love Wall Art
I hope you enjoyed our project. I'll catch you next time.


Eloy
Suggested materials:
  • 1x3 boards   (reclaimed)
  • Wood stains   (Home Depot)
  • 1/4 in mdf   (Home Depot)
See all materials
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