Antiqued Wood Guest Book Letters

 Another wedding craft!  Starting to feel like I should go into business...

For this weekend's wedding, the bride had a super fun idea of getting a jumbo T&J for the guests to sign rather than a guest book.  I knew I'd seen these huge letters everywhere, and went on a hunt.  A disappointing hunt.  The stores in our area were only carrying flat letters rather than 3-d, and the stores online had no "&" signs.  Tawnee found some on Etsy for like $50 a pop.  

Then she found out she had a family friend with some mad wood working skills who could make them, exact specifications and everything!   Awesome.

So here's what he sent.  He painted them gold.  Pretend like you can't see the blue.

Tawnee wanted them in her wedding colors, and she wanted them to have an antiqued finish.  This made me nervous, seeing as I've never antiqued anything, and I had a sinking feeling it was going to be more challenging than just taking a piece of sand paper to it.  

I tried to talk her into solid colors. She wasn't interested.  Then, as we were looking at paint colors, my eyes were magically drawn to a bottle of Crackle Medium, and all my problems were solved.  Carckle Medium would certainly do all the antiquing for me.  At least that's what the instructions seemed to be saying.  All of a sudden I was SO EXCITED TO START THIS PROJECT!

The instructions said to paint one layer (gold=done), let it dry, paint on the crackle medium, let it dry, and then paint on a top coat that would crackle when dry. 

 

I was seriously disappointed by the lack of crackle. 

 Maybe I didn't do it right.

So I re-painted it all, giving it a nice thick layer all the way around, and letting it dry for a long time. 

Only slightly more crackle. Time for some sand paper...

I sanded all over lightly, with a fine grit paper, exposing some of the gold below. 

And focusing extra time and effort on the edges. 

My favorite is this lovely ampersand. 

But they all turned out great.  Sand paper... not so difficult. 

At the wedding, guests signed in...

Their welcome table was somuch fun!

Super fun idea! I love how they turned out.