Duffy's - Handpainted Sign for the Bar

I did some tweaking to the outdoor fold-up bar this weekend. Made it a little more personalized if you will.

Tom and his friends have this running joke where either they'll call and ask for "Duffy" or he'll answer the phone, "Duffy's Bar, Duffy speaking". It's been going on for years. So I decided that this was going to be Duffy's Bar.

This is what I came up with for the fold-up cover:

I played around with font styles in Photoshop, and then pasted in a palm tree graphic that I found online (after I copied and flipped it). We made it Bar and Grill because, well, the bar is next to the grill. And I added palm trees since we want the space to have a relaxed feel, and our favourite vacation spots are tropical.

I did try my freezer paper transfer method to get a stencil on the wood that I could then paint over, but the bar is so heavily lacquered that the ink ran right off. So I printed each of the words and the trees individually on 8.5 x 11 paper and set to work cutting it all out by hand with an X-acto knife. I sometimes think about getting a Silhouette machine but I don't really do a lot of lettering, so I've never felt it was worth the money. But after cutting out 15 letters and two trees (plus an apostrophe!) I sure was wishing I had one.

I taped down each word and used a sponge brush to dab the paint onto the wood. One tip: if you're using letters with closed loops (like B's, A's, P's, etc.), leave a little bit of the letter uncut so that the inside of the loop is still attached. You can then paint in the missing part afterwards with an artist's brush.

Also, dabbing the paint on rather than brushing it helps to keep paint from seeping under the paper.

I just kept layering on paint until I got the coverage that I wanted. I used the same paint colour as on the walls in my craft room (which I don't think I've officially posted about).

Once that was dry I hand-painted the detail on the trees with an artist's brush. That was stressful as I am by no means an artist.

The two trees aren't exactly the same since it was done freehand, but I think that gives it a bit of a homey appearance. The letters are also a little rough around the edges but I like that too.

I also added some fine lines to each letter to give them more dimension.

The colour I used for the detail work was the same as the background but with a little black, brown, and yellow acrylic paint added in to darken it.

Here is our finished product. 

I love it. And more importantly, since it was for Tom, he loves it. He can hardly wait for his friends to come over and see the sign. He's not going to tell them, he's just going to let them discover it.

I was going to sand it for an aged look and then lacquer over it, but I've decided to just let it fade on its own.

So, to recap, here is the before:

And here is the after (we lost the flowers in a wind storm):

The bar is now open! 

(Well actually it`s closed, but you know what I mean.)

 

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I'm linking up here this week!