Decorating: Photo wall

This weekend I was able to attend a local Junkin' in June event hosted by JB Knacker in Gilbert, IA. Junkin' in June is a flea market with many different store locations across central Iowa selling their vintage goods.

I was looking for several different items: a bookcase for Sidney's room, console tables for specific areas in our house, a rocking chair for our front porch and barn wood. The barn wood was the only "find" I purchased and I had a perfect plan for these historical pieces of wood.

I have been wanting to do this photo wall for a while, but I just needed the wood to do it. Josh asked me why I didn't do this earlier and use new wood. I could have done that, but there is something about the worn look of used barn planks. Plus, it turned out perfect. Don't you love them?

I already had the pictures hanging exactly where they are in the photo above. I've wanted to put the saying "I love you to the moon and back" anywhere close to these photos (which I need to update, new project, yea!). Almost every night the kids and I say "I love you to the moon and back down to the worms." Just a little bit more then back to the moon, we go down to the worms in the ground. Sawyer came up with that one. So, needless to say this saying is a perfect fit, and this photo wall is directly outside their bedrooms.

Anyway, back to the Junkin' in June event. I had a great time and saw some great finds. Check out this totally cool dentist cabinet. If I had a place for it in my house, I would have purchased it.

And this old game table. I almost purchased this for our basement, which isn't finished. I wanted to hang this on the wall, but decided against it since we don't have any short term plans for our basement.

Also, this table completely jumped out at me. They did a great job painting this side table in mustard yellow.

Now, back to the barn wood...

This is what the original wood looked like. The red stain was perfect, exactly what I was looking for. However, when I put the wood up next to the black frames, it just didn't look right in the space. We don't have any red up in that area, so I decided to dry brush the boards with black acrylic paint.

To dry brush: barely dip a brush in the black acrylic paint.

Start brushing the board and spread around as much as possible.

You want some of the wood to show through.

Here is what one board looked like.

I did this in the 90+ degree heat in Iowa, which was a bonus, because the paint dried really fast. This was perfect for me, because I like to get a project done quick!

Speaking of quick...I just free-handed the letters. I didn't want to bother with designing the letters on the computer, then printing them, then tracing them, etc.

So I took a pencil and started drawing. Getting the spacing right was the hardest task. I started from the outside with the "I L" on the left and the "OU" on the right.

Then I painted the letters with Khaki acrylic paint. This took me about an hour to do the "I LOVE YOU" board.

The finished product above. I felt that the boards would need a little more color than just black and khaki so I added mustard yellow stars (again, free-handed).

I could hardly wait to get these on the wall!

To hang them I purchased sawtooth hangers from Walmart for a whopping $0.97.

Measuring carefully, I placed the sawtooth hangers on the boards.

And thanks to Pinterest, I used toothpaste to hang them. If you place a little dab of toothpaste on the sawtooth hanger where you want the nail to be, then put it up to the wall. The toothpaste will stick to the wall exactly where you need the nail to go. Genius!