So Brendon's room (my two year old) is mostly a cars and trucks theme, and I know a lot of people don't like theme rooms but Brendon loooves cars and trucks so I thought it would be really cute to kind of run with that. I don't have much money to purchase artwork for his room so I thought it would be fun to try and make some and this is what I came up with.
Supplies you will need:
- Unfinished wood plaques from the craft store - I got mine from Michael's at $1.49 each and used two different shapes
- White Spray Paint or Craft Paint - I think I paid $3.00 at WalMart for mine, they have the cheapest spray paint I've found
-Finished or Unfinished Wood Cutouts from the craft store - they cost between $.50 - $1.00 depending on the size generally and you can find them on the woodworking aisle. I actually picked mine up at a yard sale and the woman had already painted them but I saw the same ones at Michaels for $.59 - $.99 each.
- Craft Paints - The cutouts I had were already painted but craft paints are generally pretty inexpensive at around $.99 per paint I think. Michael's also had pre-painted wood cutouts as well.
- Ribbon - you will need something to attach to your base wood plaque to hang it with so I
used some striped grosgrain ribbon I had laying around from another project.
- Gorilla Glue to attach the two pieces of wood together - I already had on hand which I purchased from Walmart I think
- A staple gun to attach your ribbon - also had on hand
- Nails to hang your plaques
Total cost of my project = $12.00
$6.00 wood base plaques
$3.00 spray paint
$3.00 cars, trucks cutouts (yard sale)
I had all other supplies on hand
Step 1 - spray paint your wood plaques with the white spray paint or whatever color you want, I used white because I wanted the bright colors on the cut outs to really pop. I used about 2-3 coats on each plaque
Step 2 - If you purchase unpainted wood cutouts paint them and let dry
Step 3 - Once both your base plaque and your wood cut outs are dry you are ready to attach them with the gorilla glue. Now if you don't have gorilla glue you could probably use hot glue but I haven't had the best experience trying to attach wood items with hot glue which is why I used gorilla glue and so far it worked really well! Okay this sounds weird but it says so on the gorilla glue bottle so it's what I did. Dampen the back of your wood cutout with water, not drenching it but evidently the glue works best when one piece is wet so I just ran each piece under the water faucet and then blotted it off. I then drizzled the gorilla glue to the back of the cutout (not too much because it will expand once dried and spill over the edge, this happened to one of my plaques) and attach them to the wood base plaque. The directions then say to clamp the pieces together with binder clips or put pressure on them for at least an hour. I didn't have binder clips big enough so I put all my pieces on the floor and then sat my husbands tool box on top of them all. This sounds crazy but I wanted there to be plenty of pressure on all the pieces so they would stick well and it worked!
Step 4 - Almost done! After waiting about an hour I flipped my plaques over, cut the amount of ribbon I wanted to form a hanger and just stapled the ends into the plaque with a staple gun (watch your fingers).
Step 5 - Hang them up!
I still need to touch up some of the plaque edges with white paint but for now they will do! I'm pretty happy with how they came out and they look really cute in Brendon's room. I hope I didn't bore you with too many details:)
