I've been wanting a wood Christmas sign for a long time but each year I seem to get so busy it doesn't happen. This project lit the fire & I've now got 2 lovely wood trees to hang in the open space on our farmers porch each year :)

-I headed down to our wood pile & chose 2 rough finish boards that would fit between the siding boards on our house.

-Rolled a thick coat of Rust-Oleum Chalked Linen White on each board as my base coat since I was still trying to figure out the plan...

-I then measured our space & Cut them down to size

-Using the Silhouette Cameo I designed 2 contrasting tree's and printed them out on permenant vinyl.
*I was hoping the permenant vinyl would stick to the rough texture of the boards....but it didn't. So, I tried to seal it with the Matt Poly. This seemed to work for the 'stick tree' but not the 'bubble tree'

-Using Rust-Oleum Early American (my favorite stain) I pounced the brush over the vinyl trying to avoid any seeping under. I should have been more careful on the 'stick tree' but since it didn't have vinyl bubbling up like the other I wiped it on less carefully and it went under.

-My solution was to sand the finish down to distress them and give it the hint of snowfall? ;)

-Afterwards I wanted the trees to pop more than they did so I added some red ornaments to the 'stick tree' and created shadows on the stars and the bubble tree using Charcoal Chalked paint...

-Finally I sprayed a coat of enamel topcoating on & after it dried I added screws, wire hangers, hung them up!

As a final touch I added some fresh garland to frame the trees.... I love how the red ornaments on the 'Stick Tree' compliment the red berries on the garland!

Even though they didn't go as planned, I feel like they are right at home on our fixer upper farmhouse porch that's rough around the edges too!

**(Sorry- I can't get the photos to submit in the correct order (I've deleted them all & uploaded 1 @ a time but they still show out of order)

Farmhouse Christmas Trees