~Tutorial: Wood-Grain Bird Silhouette~

After

This brief tutorial will show the basic steps to create a wood-grain silhouette.  In this case I used a bird-on-a-branch stencil I bought from Amazon. {Stencil Link Here}.  I thought it was pretty cute.
The vintage bread box started out looking like this:

Before

First line the front of your project with painters tape {I overlapped mine but found that when it came time to peel it off it was easier if the tape was in a single layer-not overlapped}.  Then center and tape on your stencil.

Once the stencil is in place trace the outline with a fine-tip black sharpie.  Then the hard part--remove the stencil and cut along the sharpie line with a xacto knife.  I acutally found it was easier to use a Dull blade versus a sharp one.  This is the most tedious part but once you're done peel away the tape and you should be left with something looking like this {please excuse the flash-these pics were taken late at night on my phone camera}:

Next grab your paint and paintbrush and get ready to paint!  I used my trusty Purdy brush and Antibes Green Annie Sloan Chalk Paint.  The awesome thing about chalk paint is that it does not require any prep work for the wood {although this piece was pretty gunky so I did a light sanding first}.    Make sure to really press down the edges of your painters tape before painting to minimize leakage underneath.  Then go to town!  I used a light brush stroke and tried to paint from the center of the stencil out.  

Once you are finished painting, while the paint is still damp, use your xacto knife and gently lift up the edge of the tape and peel away.  If there is any leakage wait until the paint is dry and gently scrape the excess paint away with the xacto knife {but don't worry too much about it--once you distress the piece any minor imperfections will look intentional}.

Here is what the bread box looked like the next morning completely finished but before I had distressed it:

Note the rough paint edges that will get sanded away during the distressing process

I did a fairly heavy distressing using a 220 grit sanding block and finished the piece with a coat of walnut stain, clear wax and a gorgeous Anthropologie knob. 

Now...ta da...the finished bread box {again}...distressed and ready to go into the Etsy Shop:

What do you think?  What stencil projects have you done lately?