You gotta have that Nawlins love.

As some of you may know I grew up in Louisiana for half of my life. The other half up here in Oregon. My kitchen is Cajun/Creole themed and I wanted to have a big piece of art to go over my fire place to tie some of the rooms together. So I took to etsy. Found some great state love art and transferred those ideas into something more my own.






I got two boards in the cheap section of crappy woods at lowes. Why cheap and crappy? So it looks more rustic. Duh. I didn't want to have to distress my own boards, so I got some that already had great knots and lines. these two board together cost me less than $5. Score.

I got special walnut stain from lowes as well. I thought the color would look good with the paint I will be using on top of it. And I got some GREAT brushes from michaels(with a coupon) for pennies.


While staining I had to

1) try and keep the cat from eating the stain and putting her hand in the jar and jumping on the boards.
2) I had to do two layers on the stain to get it how I needed it.
3)Pick which side I wanted to be the presentation side. After staining it can bring out some unknown qualities. For example the bottom board had a huge scratch in it that I needed to turn around.






I wait a long time in between each stain session. I didn't want my boards to be really tacky and have a longer wait time in the end. I let them completely dry before moving on to the hardware steps.

Stupidly I thought "Hey! why not use nails instead or wood screws because they are cheaper and the ignorant 13 year old staff at lowes said it would work the same!" hahahahahahahha. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

I also ignorantly thought that I should put these vertical instead of horizontal. I'm losing it.

For one vertical made the boards way to flimsy and weren't sturdy. Good thing I realized this on the first one and redid the next two.

As for the nails, I didn't have a drill so it was difficult to get nails. Needless to say, I went and bought a drill. The nails would come out every time the board was moved and it wasn't very sturdy.


After redoing the back plates the board was much sturdier, but would have been better if I did the screws instead. But I said screw it and kept the nails just so I could have the project be done and over with.

I free handed the writing on this because I didn't have the required materials to space the letters perfectly, nor did I have the patience at 1am this morning.

Too restless to sleep, why not craft?!

As you can see my original free hand looked a little crapped up, but then it really just looked like the signs in New Orleans and in Louisiana for restaurant signs.

So I just spruced it up a tiny bit more, made some straighter edges and called it quits.

Over all I like the way it turned out. The letters aren't perfectly straight, but I think my Louisiana free hand was PRETTY FREAKIN GOOD. If I do say so myself.

So this will be going above my fire place and I think it will tie the Cajun kitchen and normal contemporary living room together.

Here's my terrible cat trying to take a nap on my freaking knife it. I had to thoroughly wash the whole thing. (insert another angry face here)