Pottery Barn Knockoff..Kitchen Art

Supplies:

 wood:

 you need one piece the size of what you want your finished project to be and then you can use what ever kind of wood you would like to cut for the pieces, we went with the plank pieces so that cutting was easier.  I picked the pine that had different coloring in them 

trim:

this is for the frame, I just held them up to the wood while at the lumber store. I wanted it to a little bigger then  the wood so that there was some dimension with it also. It all depends on the wood you get and how thick you make yours

jig saw:

this is a must for lots of fun diy projects.

    wood glue:

I went with gorilla glue for this one. 

images : 

I looked on the net for the different veggies I knew I wanted and found some that had a similar look

    gel medium:

I use liquitex matte gel I get it at hobby lobby or michael's 

clamps:

we used several different kinds and as you will see later we even used bricks to help with the gluing. 

  paint:

I only painted the back piece on this one but you can add colors to your pieces like the original has. 

 The first thing you need to do is decide on the size of the art that want to make. I went with 24 x 34. At first I had planned on painting the pieces like the original has, but once I saw the colors on the wood at the lumber store I stuck with just the natural colors of the wood and the transferring gave the pieces a vintage look which just made them perfect. This picture is listed as being on sale for 229.00 at the moment (the original price was $299.00). I was able to make my version for $52.00! It can be done for less depending on the wood that you buy. We just went with what hubby thought would be easiest for him to work with :)  

Let's get started with the cutting. What we did is cut one piece at a time going in rows right to left. We would lay a piece of wood in the next spot to determine what size we wanted that one to be and marked it to cut. I have to say it was like making a puzzle. If you are good with a jig saw this is easy, I tried but for the life of me I couldn't cut a straight line to save my life so hubby was a big help there. The system that I found that worked the best is after a piece was cut I would number it, again going right to left row by row. When writing the numbers make sure you so it lightly so that it will erase off easily. I ended up with 31 pieces. 

Now after lots of measuring and cutting, the backing board was covered. It's time to print and transfer the images. Again I just went onto the net and found clip art of the veggies that I wanted to use. I will say that since I was just using my printer for the images I need an image that has a lot of ink (meaning a lot of black coloring that will be printed). Getting a copy machine copy is the best way to make sure any transfer works well.  Next I sized the images and then decided where they were going to be placed. I then turned them over and put the number on the back so that I made sure to put the right imagine on the right wood piece. 

Time to do the transfers, you will need the gel medium and and sponge brush and of course the image.   First put the number on the piece of wood on the back to keep track. You want to put a coat of gel medium just in the area that that the image is going, you will not only be transferring the ink but it will seal the wood in that area so it the extra ink will not bleeding into the wood, which is what gave mine that vintage look. Make sure that you put a good amount on but also make sure that it is smooth and no lumps and bumps. Once you have it lay your image face down and smooth it out gently, do this for all the pieces. Now the waiting begins. You want to let this dry very well so over night is your best bet to make sure that it is good and dry, you want to let it dry at lest 10 hours. 

This is now where I have to have a long talk with my camera since it decided to mess up the pictures of this next step. Once the gel medium has dried completely just spritz the paper with some water and start rubbing the paper off. As you are rubbing some of the ink with be on your fingers and this is where I just rubbed my fingers on the rest of the wood to give it the vintage look. After all the paper is rubbed off your pieces this would be when you would add a paint color is you so choose. My suggestion for this would be to add water to the paint to make it more like a wash so that it is a light wash of color to the wood piece. 

Almost there, let's break out the glue and clamps! Glue the first row down and clamp. It takes about an hour a row and you can only do one row at a time so that you get a good fit and nothing shifts. Now as you can see once that first row was done it was harder to use a clap to hold the wood piece on, so we just grabbed the extra bricks we had on the porch and used them to insure a good glue to wood contact. 

This another part of the project that takes a lot of waiting but it is well worth it in the end. Woo hoo in the home stretch now. With all the pieces glued down its time to decide where you want to put the raised pieces, measure, cut, transfer and glue. 

Lastly we cut the trim pieces to fit the finished piece to frame it. I did a light wash of color on the trim so that it matched the whole thing better. Glue it on and clamp.  When its dry put your hanger of choice onto the back and hang up for everyone to admire.  I so love the way it  turned out and it looks better then I imagined it would in my kitchen. 

One of the biggest tips that I would give with this project is that once you have the pieces cut for your first line, go ahead and do the image transfers and then glue them onto the backing board. We thought were were keeping everything lined up well when cutting all the pieces but once we started the gluing process the last row was hanging off some, so we had to cut the extra off with a router.



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