I get blinded in my kitchen every day in the afternoon.
I’ve been toying with many ideas how to cover the window. The past owners had black blinds, that isn’t my thing so they came down and were put in the trash pretty much right away.
I have always had a bit of a love for cornice boards. I know that it wouldn’t solve my afternoon sun problem but I’m working on that too.
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So I stole a piece of wood from my garage. My husband had to go out and buy more scrap wood because I keep stealing wood. I measured the area over the window and cut the wood to the size I wanted. But it looked like this – it used to be part of a stage we had created for the kids.
I wanted to use the reverse side that doesn’t have any paint or finish but I didn’t want to look in from the outside and see that odd pattern so I took some white paint and covered it.
I flipped it over to reveal a pretty wood grain. I wanted to incorporate the sage green color I painted the island but also show the grain of the wood so I used a “staining” technique that you can do with paint. I used the technique a few months ago on this wall hanging I put over my “command” center.
It’s very simple, but you need to work fairly fast. Have a rag, a cup or bowl of water close by. First apply some paint to any area of the board, dampen your rag and spread the paint around. You’ll see how the paint becomes thinner and you can show as much wood grain or as little wood grain as you like.
Let it dry. And do what ever you’d like over the top or nothing at all.
My eye has really liked the french country feel of some things. I love how they have images and words on wooden furniture, boxes or other things.
I loved the aesthetic but I wanted it to mean more to me. So I went to my computer to design something.
I designed it first normally and then had the program mirror the image so that I could do what I wanted to do. The verse is from Hebrews 12:2 “Let us fix our eyes on the Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith.” There is a few ways to transfer images to wood, for this project I tried something new. I printed on freezer paper and then rubber the ink into the wood, that’s why the image needs to by printed mirrored.
Taped it down on one side so I could lift it to see how the transfer was coming with out having to re-align it. And then using the back of a spoon I rubbed the image to transfer the ink to the wood.
I think it came out pretty well.
Now I just need to work what I’m planning on using to actually block that afternoon sun and hang it all up.