Grocery Sign | How To

Good Morning!

So, I know we all like MMS Milk Paint for a variety of reasons - all natural ingredients, 25 beautiful colors, a wonderful sense of tradition, and of course, that famous "chippy" look. While I have to admit that the authenticity of the chippiness I can achieve with milk pint is what brings me back again and again (and again), it certainly isn't the original intent of the product. When the farmer was painting his wagon and his wife was painting her handmade hopechest, they were definitely not hoping that 25% of the paint would fall off 3 hours later!

As we've discussed before, when Milk Paint is applied to raw wood, it does. not. chip. I'm in the process of making a bunch of "vintage look" signs to sell and while I do want some of them to have that great chippy character,

I also want some of them to just look...worn and old, but not chippy. I'm taking my inspiration from this old board that I bought at an estate sale.

I say "bought" even though I'm not sure I actually paid anything for it. This was a HUGE estate sale - from an extremely old farm in my area. All of the contents of the house and barn were for sale - and the barn had actually been operated as an antique store of sorts at some point. This board was waaay up in the top of the barn. It was not listed as part of the contents for sale...I just crawled around in the piles (behind the goods for sale) yanking things out. The owner of the company in charge of the sale looked at me like I was a little nuts when I came past the checkout table with my pile of filthy old boards, and a bundle of old broom handles. I had "regular' stuff too - and he pretty much just waved a hand at the "junk" and said, "five dollars".

All of this to say, don't you love the look of this old board?? I think there's a pretty good chance that it was actually painted with milk paint in the first place - and I think it will make an excellent "old" sign...

Now! How can I replicate that look with MMS Milk Paint and a brand new board? That was my mission!

I was thinking maybe Kitchen Scale (one of my top favorites) would be right, but I pulled out French Enamel (not one of my top favorites) first and realized that it was probably closer to the right color.

I chose a scrap of wood from my garage - it's actually a really high quality (no knots) leftover from a recent house project. A lower quality piece would actually be better (because knots!).

After I painted on two quick coats of the paint, I did my own version of damage to the pristine board. I scratched and hit it with the saw, poked it with the push pin, smacked it with that grey thing (it's a leftover snow brake from my roof), and made dents with the side of the old square nail head by hitting it with the hammer.

Next I went back and did some strategic sanding. A sign doesn't really have "typical" wear spots like a dresser or a wardrobe so I just tried to copy the authentic wear of the inspiration board.

So the problem here is all of that bright NEW wood showing through, right? The blue color needs some toning down as well... I covered the entire sign front and back with MMS Antiquing Wax....and then I got distracted was called away for something really important. I left the full coat of wax on the wood until it was totally dry. Normally you would rub it off as you go along. Since I'm almost past the point of panicking when I totally mess up try something new, I just went and got some regular wax on a cloth and tried rubbing it into the hardened dark wax. It took a bit more elbow grease than I thought it would but it did work. I was actually pleased with the result and I'd probably do it again. I was able to remove most of the wax in some spots and leave it looking sort of wild and streaky in others. It looks like authentic dirt...

I got the GROCERY stencil from Funky Junk Donna. This is one of the stencils from her ever expanding Old Sign Stencil Collection.(Check them out here!)I like my signs to look old but I like my lettering to be PERFECT. Using a stencil is definitely the way to go for me. Unlike Marian, I'm sort of terrible at hand lettering! I painted the lettering with plain black craft paint and did a VERY light sanding over the lettering when it was dry.

I'm actually really happy with the end product. I think the sign looks authentically old - even though it was made with brand new wood. This is a really good alternative when you can't arrange to crawl around in a the top of a barn to find 200 year old painted boards.. I might also try rubbing a dark wood stain over the initial coats of milk paint...I'm also planning to try staining the wood with a dark stain before painting. My gears are turning...there are so many options!

I'm going to be making many more signs - I'll definitely show you some more techniques - and I've got some great before and after furniture pieces coming up soon, too!