Scavenger Chic

Cow , Pig, Sheep, Rooster

• By Joan
• March 28, 2018
• 5 Comments

In honor of Spring I was totally in the mood to paint another seed packet sign like the Sunflowers I painted back in 2015. I was totally immersed in my search finding, pansies, daisies,  dahlias and poppies.  

I don’t know why, but somewhere in my search and for some unknown reason I looked up cows which led eventually to an animal stack.  Flowers were suddenly out and animal stacks were in.

Little did I know when I first started looking, is that a animal stack with barnyard animals is pretty common, you can find stacks with three, four and 5 animals and even with other types of animals.  I eventually found the above clipart here.  When you decide on your picture, save it to a file.

So instead of flowers painted on pallet wood, the plan is for a pile of barnyard animals painted on pallets.

Skip this part if you’ve been here before and you’re tired of my instructions on enlarging.

I always use Microsoft Publisher where I can enlarge my design to any size I like.  Go to Blank Page Size and choose “Create custom Page size”. My sign will be 29″ x 42″ and press “create”.  With your new page…Insert..Picture…From File.  Once your  picture has been inserted, enlarge it to the size of your blank page.

If you go to a print preview you’ll see that this print, at this size, will print out on 16 sheets of paper.

Print out, trim and tape back together.

Gather your pallet wood, reclaimed wood or even a piece of plywood.

1.  Cut all your pallet pieces to the same length (29″)
2.  Use more pallet wood cross pieces to hold all your wood together.  Nail or screw to attach.
3.  Sand
4.  Paint background color.  Here I’m using  white chalk paint.

Again, you probably see me do this over and over…to transfer the design to the pallet I’m scribbling on the back.  This time I’m using a black pastel, but I’ve also used chalk and just a plain ordinary pencil.

Tape the design in place on the pallet wood and go over all the features with a pen.  You should be left with your design ready for painting.

Instead of black I opted for this Hurricane Grey from Dixie Belle paints watered down just a bit so it flows on smooth over the rough pallet wood.  It’s the same grey that I used for the French Serving Cart.

For the outline and dark grey areas I used the full strength paint.

For the lighter area and softer areas I painted on a few strokes then smudged the paint with my finger.  After a while it seemed like I was just finger painting all the animals.  I don’t know why but somehow this technique works.

The original plan was to transfer and paint the second line of lettering, the part about the cuisine on the table, but that would have hit in the gap between the pallets so I left that line off.  Better planning and a piece of the fatter pallet wood at the top would have fixed that problem.

I also left off the ‘3, Place’ part of the Paris address and centered the ‘Saint-Michel Paris’ part of that line.

Last step was to go back and sand the edges and any other rough spots that popped up.

I still may do another flower packet sign, but the lesson for  all is, when you’re looking for flowers don’t get distracted by cows.  🙂

Stay inspired.

Shared at  Salvaged Junk Projects,

Metamorphosis Monday, Talk of the Town,

Wow us Wednesdays,

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