Turn Inexpensive Plain Jane Crates Into Fancy Decorative Crates!

I purchased two crates for $10 each at Walmart to use as kindling storage on the firewood rack I built. The crates were very plain and boring so I wanted to fancy them up a bit and make them match the firewood rack a little more.
Here are the before pics of the crates:
Before Pic: Plain Jane Crate
Before Pic: Plain Crates
I decided I would stain the crates and then paint a design on each end of the crates to pretty them up! So, I first stained both crates with Varathane Dark Walnut stain to match the wood on the top and bottom of the firewood rack.
Stained the crates Dark Walnut
I then created four designs on PicMonkey that I wanted to paint on the crates and printed them out.
Printed designs to trace onto crates
I then placed the image over the end of the crate where I wanted the image to be. Using a pen, I traced over the image on the paper, pressing hard enough to leave indentations in the wood.
Traced the image to transfer it to wood
Image indentations on wood
I then used a very thin, but stiff paint brush and white paint and filled in the indentation of the image.
Painted in traced image
I repeated this process until the two ends of both crates had a design painted on them. Here are some pics of the other designs:
And here are some pics of the crates in their final location on the firewood rack:
Pinspired to DIY
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
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  • Diena Cameron Diena Cameron on Mar 26, 2016
    Hi, i know this is a older post but wanted to let you know how cute this was. Too bad i have a gas fireplace, lol ! I was wondering though if you had to buy the boxes on the web from Walmart or did your local store carry them ? Thanks so much and by the way, this post was on Home talk which I adore. Thsnks for a great post and idea.
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