WOOD-n't it be nice?

time for another brand new challenge at shopping our stash, it's called "wood is good" and we'd like to see WOOD or WOODGRAIN on your projects. because we know you still have some of those little wood veneer shapes left from when they were The Big Thing a couple of years ago. or maybe, like me, you've never, ever, walked past a piece of woodgrain patterned paper --be it realistically brown, whimsically pink, or somewhere in between-- without purchasing at least one piece. and since we're all about using up those older goodies it's time to dust them off and do something FUN! for example, did you know that you can stain wood with ColorBurst??! if not, you probably want to watch this ken oliver video ASAP. but first, just take a gander at my card, k?

wooden letters from target's "kid made modern" line stained with peony, gamboge, chartreuse, cerulean and wisteria colorburst; patterned paper: echo park; cloud vellum that i have noooooooooo recollection of buying, and it must've been YEARS ago: american crafts/dear lizzy; (ancient) letter stickers: ki memories; sun and cloud brads: eyelet outlet; white kromekote cardstock: the paper cut; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sewing machine

i should point out that this technique is only going to work on raw, unfinished wood. if the product has already been sealed or poly-ed, the color is obviously not going to sink in properly. in the video, ken uses burnt umber to get a beautifully realistic woodstain look. which i can see being handy for all sorts of things. but you know i had to try out as many other colors as possible. so that's what i did. i made a few little discoveries, which i'm happy to share, o'course! i started out thinking i'd need to use dark shades and plenty of pigment; but after a bit of experimentation, i discovered that i really liked the reverse better, at least for this particular project. lighter shades, applied a bit more sparingly, seemed to show the woodgrain more... go figure?! this is one of the many reasons that, as with any brand new technique, i highly recommend doing a "test run" whenever possible. thankfully, the wooden alphabet i used had plenty of extra letters, as well as punctuation and numerals. if you have only ONE of what you need, maybe try out your color on the back... just to see how it looks. in the interests of full disclosure: no, i didn't seal my letters after they were stained. mostly because i knew they were going on a card. if you're trying this with any project that's going to be handled, or come in contact with other surfaces --like a frame or box or decor item-- you'll want to seal it!

here's another somewhat gratuitous photo, because this one shows that the letters are popped up on foam tape for even more dimension, and the layers of paper that make up the background are left loose at the edges. (the latter because it's a cool look i discovered during ICAD and have been trying to figure out how to do in a more mainstream card context!) if you're wondering did i use special adhesive for the vellum? nope. just use my plain old tape runner thingie. i did place the adhesive strategically, so it's hidden under the wooden letters and the letter stickers. of course, i later added stitching to the stickers, as well as a couple of cute eyelet sun and cloud outlet brads, so really i didn't even NEED adhesive, afterall!

be sure to check out all the other ways that "wood is good" over on the SOS blog, darlings! ♥