LUNCH anyone?

Since we built the shelves in the kitchen I haven't been happy with what I had up there.  It just wasn't looking right to me.  So I went to my go-to place for inspiration, Pinterest. 

I found my inspiration picture very quickly.  I was looking for something easy and inexpensive.  Basically I wanted to "shop" my house and use what I already had. 

Source

 

This picture looked simple and elegant and I had pretty much everything I needed except for the artwork.  But remember, I'm doing this on the cheap so I don't want to spend anything.

I also found the picture below while doing the same search for kitchen shelves and I loved the vintage "LUNCH" sign. 

Source 

I remembered a friend gave me a piece of wood that she hadn't used and it was sitting in my garage waiting for me to find a place for it. 

So I got busy.

I sized out my letters in Microsoft Word, printed them out, cut them out, traced them on contact paper and then cut the letters out of that.  The first time I did this I wanted my board to look just like the inspiration picture. 

First, I spray painted my bottom coat black then put the letters on once the paint was dry.  Then I spray painted white on top of the letters so when I peeled off the letters the black would show through.  I got too "sand paper happy" and sanded off too much and it just didn't look right.  So I started over.

I followed the same method here.

I sanded the board back down where there was just a little bit of black left.  I spray painted a layer of white over the black then put down new letters cut out of contact paper.  Then I sprayed green over the white.  I peeled off my letters and started sanding. 

The more I sanded more black came through on the white letters.  When it comes to distressing something I'm always a little nervous to do it.  I'm afraid I'm going to go overboard and mess everything up (like I did the first time) so this go-around I was very cautious not to do that. 

This was a happy accident that turned out lovely.  Now I need to figure out what to do for art on the top shelf in the kitchen.  Sometimes I look at the sign and think it still looks too perfect but quite frankly I was tired of sanding.  So here it is all finished.

Have a great weekend!