My Ballard-Inspired Wood Plaques

I {heart} Ballard Designs catalog... and if I could actually afford their things, I'd probably decorate every single room with their styles.

Alas, I cannot... well, and still manage to feed my kids.

So, when I find something I REALLY like, I either wait for it to hit the outlet page, buy only the things under $30 (like my rubber doormat or small door rugs), or duplicate it myself.  

(Or just pout a little till the pain subsides.)

So, when I saw this....

from Ballard Designs

I loved the idea of it.  Granted, they were the right size (about 8" square) and looked really cute... but I couldn't get over how much it looked like framed scrapbook paper.  I mean no disrespect toward the artist... they are beautiful.  But some scrapbook paper can look pretty doggone cool, too.

We recently (finally!) painted our kitchen walls.  Yes, I took a huge leap of faith and painted them "Water Chestnut".  Um, that means they went from white to cream.  :)  Here you can see that wildly daring color above the window.

Like my new Cricut words over the window?  We are big-time tea lovers here!  By the way, that red valance will be going soon.  Looking for more subtle colors.

Anyway, the walls were finally done, and we liked the simplicity of the Water Chesnut, but I needed to splash some color in the room.  Muted color, but color indeed.

So, I decided to make my own plaques... with my own choice of colors (and refused to pay $169 for the Ballard ones).

I bought a 6' length of 1"x8" pine board at Home Depot, and my dad cut it into squares (I think they were about 7.75" square when finished).  That gave me 9 squares.  

 Then I painted the squares' edges with some paint I had on hand.  I think it was the color of our family room.  :)  I painted a little on the face of each too, since I didn't expect the paper to be the exact size of each square.

Here, my daughter is beginning to Mod Podge the squares.  We coated each square with a thin, but complete coat of Mod Podge (not too thick).

Then we applied the cut paper we chose.  I was aiming for some simple patterns, but in the greens, rusts, and neutrals that we have throughout our main floor.

After they were all covered and dried (overnight), we applied one more coat of Mod Podge to the top.  I'm not great with this.  Somehow a few still ended up puckering and bubbling.  Ugh.  No worries... I worked with it.

Then I pulled out my "Distress Ink" ink pad and rubbed it along the edges and corners.  Then I lightly smoothed it over the surface of each square.  Guess what that did?  It highlighted those weird bubbles and puckers.  The cool thing is that instead of bringing attention to the puckered paper and showing "Here... look, she screwed up and made bubbles", the brown ink hid those bubbles under the distressing looks.

Here's a typical side-view.

Here are all of the plaques. (See in a few the brown lines?  Those are the ink-covered bubbles.)

I needed a way to hang them up... and didn't have any picture hardware on hand.  So, I turned to my daughter's huge jar of pop-tops.  

I nailed each one on by allowing about 1/16" on the side and top and nailing at the solid piece.

Here they are hanging on my kitchen wall.... now for a neat way to decorate that new table over the dog crate....

Up close....

And a side view.  Love the distressed look.

Super easy, and a great way to incorporate your favorite colors into a wall display.  I think I paid less than $16 for all of this (one-tenth of the Ballard price).  $12 for the wood (I got select pine, to make sure it was very straight.)  I had Mod Podge on hand, and the scrapbook paper was less than 50 cents apiece.