Magnolia Farms Knock-Off

Magnolia Farms Sign

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So recently I was perusing Pinterest, like most of us do, and I saw this picture pop up on my feed.

Apparently it is sold by Magnolia Farms. If you are like me then you have seen the show Fixer-Upper and have probably resisted the urge to pack up and move to Waco, TX to have your home redone and designed by Joanna Gaines. But alas, we love living in Ohio. Anyways, when I saw this sign, I fell in love. It would look perfect on my kitchen wall, right over the table my hubby is so graciously building for me (queue swooning over my adorable husband). But then I looked at the price tag. Ugh my heart sank…$125…I don’t spend that type of money to decorate, especially when I tend to shift between decor styles and change things up with every season. But as I started looking at the sign I realized that it wouldn’t be all that difficult to make.

So on our next trip to Menard’s (a bi-weekly occurrence in our house) I started looking at the lumber. They had 4 foot boards that were about 1 foot wide and 1 inch thick. Perfect size for the piece I wanted to make and even more fantastic, it was only $4! We ended up using a router to edge the board out since my dad actually has one. However, if you don’t have a router you could always just sand down the sharp edges and use tape to get clean lines while painting. After edging and sanding, I was ready to get my paint on!

I painted the entire board with 2 coats of the darker color we had chosen. After that dried, I painted the inner rectangle with 2 coats of the cream color. Once everything was dry, I distressed some of the board by lightly sanding the board.

The lettering process was by far the longest part of the whole project. Once I chose a font for the text, I simply printed the phrase at the correct size to fit with my board. After everything was printed, I scribbled on the back of the paper with pencil to make a quick transfer sheet. Then I lined the transfer sheets up on the board and just traced the outlines of the text. When the paper was lifted, I had outlines of the text on the board ready to be filled in! I chose to fill the letters with a paint pen since it gives a much crisper line than trying to finagle a tiny paintbrush around one drop at a time.

After the paint dried, I ran the sand paper over the board a bit more to weather the text. For the final touches, I had grabbed a small bottle of dark wax from Hobby Lobby. Every tutorial I had watched said to use clear wax before applying dark wax. The reason for this is that if you directly apply the dark wax, it soaks in very quickly and doesn’t rub out as cleanly. If you were to put down clear wax first, it allows you a little more control and flexibility with the dark wax. Well…I had only purchased dark wax. But since it was only a $4 board and since I am an incredibly impatient person, I decided to go ahead with only using the dark wax. I LOVED IT! I just applied a little bit at a time with an old rag and immediately buffed it off. For some extra richness, I also applied a tiny bit of stain and immediately wiped it off. I was so pleased with the final product and it gave me lots of ideas for more signs to use for decor or gifts. Who knows…maybe I’ll start selling them ;).