Scrap Wood Signs

I have a habit of staring at the odd, empty places in my house and taking WAY too long to figure out what to put in them.  One time, after yet another night of scouring Pinterest and drinking the cheap, local wine which flows so freely in Southern Spain, I decided to do something about those spaces.  So I began to dig through my scrap wood and extra paint that has been lurking around in the garage since my latest project, the Headboard Bench.

Luckily, the two pieces of wood left over from the seat of the bench were the perfect size to fit in both odd spaces of my living room so I didn't have to deal with the excruciatingly long and pathetic ordeal that is me trying to cut through this crap with a hand saw the size of a child's toy.  So that was a plus!  

For the first one, I wanted something over our doorway leading from the living room to the hallway, mostly just to add some sort of flair to that wall because the TV takes up most of it.  Here's what I came up with... mind you I'm still working on my fancy script writing but hey it was worth a shot!

For this one, I used some old cream colored chalk paint and watered it down a bit then brushed it over the untreated wood to let it soak in.  I gave the wood a couple of coats of this, then took white milk paint and applied it liberally to random areas on the front.  In hindsight, I wish I would've left a few areas in the middle with less of the milk paint so that the distressed wood look was more prominent but you live and you learn.  After it dried I took a black sharpie and free-handed the lettering and scroll design, then turned the board over and stapled wire to the back with a staple gun so that I could hang it from a nail.  

Then we had this awkward space in the corner above our couch and under our wall A/C unit, so here's the other one!

 

On this board, I had some blue spray paint left over from a while back so I sprayed the whole thing blue, milk-painted over it (I learned my lesson by this one and watered down the milk paint a bit), let it dry, then freehanded with a sharpie again and added wire to the back for hanging.  Voila!  A few empty spaces filled without turning to my BFFL Amazon!