Salvaging the Salvage Project

There are many different ways to get an image you desire onto wood, whether it be old pallet wood or brand new wood you just purchased from the hardware store, however the new way I tried this week needs some work to perfect, but I had to salvage my project.

These are my new addition to the tops of my kitchen cabinets, you know that one foot space above your cabinets that sometimes we don't know what to do with.  Here's the perfect addition to that space.

I start out with guess what?  That's right pallet wood boards.  I thought I'd do something a little different with my boards this time, I usually take a torch and burn it to distress them, this time I thought I'd try a coffee stain instead.  I took a cup of boiling water, added 2 teaspoons of instant espresso powder, and let cool.  I used espresso powder because it's what I had on hand, but instant coffee works as well.

Instant aging, and because of the water applied to the wood I got some raised wood grain for texture which is perfect.  Let dry.

Next we add our desired design.  I chose the farm animal silhouettes, but the sky's the limit with whatever your creative mind and decor needs can come up with.  I had done some research on using a substance called Liquitex which is a gel medium to transfer your image onto wood.  I painted the Liquitex onto the wood, laid my reverse design over the Liquitex, and let dry overnight.

Next you take a fairly wet rag and start rubbing off the paper, and you're supposed to be left with a clean image from your paper onto the wood, however mine didn't turn out that way.

And I started loosing the image all together while trying desperately to get the paper off.  Needless to say I was a little devastated at the look of my project, but we must salvage it so here's what we did.

I sanded all my boards again to get as much of the remaining paper off as I could.  I reprinted my silhouettes un-reversed, and used a graphite stick to color the back of the picture.

Laid it on the board, and lined it up as best I could over the original cow, then traced the outline with a pencil.

When you remove the paper the outline is left

I used black acrylic paint and added water to thin it out.

After the paint had dried, I went over the whole board again with the coffee stain, let that dry, and went over the board with sand paper to distress the paint.

We salvaged this project, and now we have perfectly distressed farm animal silhouettes to complete our distressed farmhouse look on top of our cabinets. 

I would love to hear from you if your Liquitex project worked, and what I might have done wrong!  Would like to perfect that image transfer technique.