DIY Wooden Guestbook

This was a really fun DIY project for mine and Andrew's wedding. We are discovering that we love working together on projects like these (which is probably good because I have a lot of them to do). We found this idea on pinterest when we were looking for a unique guestbook to use instead of the traditional book. We loved that this fit into our theme and could be displayed in our home after the wedding. Here is how we made it:

You will need:

-Two wood peices
-other wood things
-screws
-stain
-paint
-paint brushes

Instructions:

For the building portion of this project I will be handing the blog over to Andrew, since he built and stained the guestbook.

The first thing to consider about the guest book was how big we wanted it to be, I consulted Sarah for this and we decided on 3 feet wide by a foot and half tall. We went to home depot and bought three 6 foot lengths of 1x3 select pine and a 6 foot length of 1x2 knotty pine to be the support.

I cut the lengths of 1x3 using a radial arm saw and clamped them together making it approximately 18 inches tall and 36 inches wide. I then marked the length I needed for the supports on the back, cut them and screwed the supports on from the back so that it doesn't show from the front. I gave the whole thing a quick sand and it was ready for the next part.

The next step was the stain, Sarah and I wanted to age the wood more than stain it so I looked at some different processes and chose one that I thought would work for us. I took extra extra fine steel wool and put a bunch of it in a masonry jar then poured white vinegar over it. I let it sit for a week and the steel wool rusted and gave it a nice reddish hue. I applied it evenly with a sponge paintbrush and let it dry. It dried very red but there was a layer of rust residue left on the wood, I wiped it off and the wood looked great. That was the end of my part.

Now onto the painting portion!

After the guestbook was finished being built it was time to paint the heart on it. For this I printed out a 12" x 12" heart. I had to look up a tutorial on how to print it out, since it wouldn't fit on one page, but you can probably just free-hand it.

I had to use several coats of paint in order to get the look of the heart I wanted. Then I painted our initials onto the center of the heart.

We love how this turned out. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!