{"id":807,"date":"2015-10-14T13:51:51","date_gmt":"2015-10-14T13:51:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/?p=807"},"modified":"2015-10-21T11:08:20","modified_gmt":"2015-10-21T11:08:20","slug":"how-to-make-fake-wood-grain-texture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/how-to-make-fake-wood-grain-texture\/","title":{"rendered":"How to make a fake wood grain texture for signs and other projects"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Believe it or not, these signs are just foam board! Plus a little spray paint and wood stain. I experimented with a few techniques, and here&#8217;s what I came up with&#8230; <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/fake-wooden-signs-1.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/fake-wooden-signs-1.jpg\" alt=\"How to create a fake wood grain effect\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>For the big <a href=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/voodoo-bayou-halloween-party\/\">Voodoo Bayou<\/a> sign, I started by cutting out my foam board shapes and spray painting them with a light tan color. You can see that color on the white foam board at left, below:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/fake-wooden-signs-2.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/fake-wooden-signs-2.jpg\" alt=\"How to create a fake wood grain effect\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>(For the smaller &#8220;C&#8217;mon In!&#8221; sign, I didn&#8217;t use any paint; I just cut the foam board and then applied a layer of paper mach\u00e9 using brown craft paper and wallpaper adhesive. I&#8217;ll talk about that one in a bit.)<\/p>\n <div class=\"ad-300x250 ad-float-right\">\r\n<script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- MMS 300x250 -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:inline-block;width:300px;height:250px\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-5009313124668288\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"3616150394\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n<\/div>\n<p>Now the fun part. I applied a coat of Minwax wood stain (a mid-dark color called Special Walnut) to the Voodoo Bayou sign with a big paintbrush and used a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=wood+grainer+tool&#038;rlz=1C1CHKZ_enUS438US438&#038;espv=2&#038;biw=1920&#038;bih=955&#038;source=lnms&#038;tbm=isch&#038;sa=X&#038;ved=0CAcQ_AUoAmoVChMI2o2Nr5rCyAIVwYQNCh0URQG8\" target=\"_blank\">wood grainer tool<\/a> to create the wood pattern; this was fun and very challenging! I&#8217;d watched some YouTube videos that make this thing look easy, but it really isn&#8217;t (for me, anyway). I may have been using a type of stain that was too liquid-y, or maybe the weather was too hot and humid, or maybe my painted foam board was not the ideal material for this technique, but it really didn&#8217;t want to work like what I&#8217;d seen in the videos. I&#8217;d drag the wood grainer through the stain and it would look pretty cool for a few seconds, but then the stain would naturally spread itself out again and the pattern would be mostly gone. I&#8217;d smooth the stain out with my paint brush and try the tool again, and the same thing happened. Fortunately, after a few minutes of this, the stain started to get sticky and congeal a bit, and the grain pattern stayed a bit better. It wasn&#8217;t perfect, but close enough! Like I&#8217;d seen in the videos, I did one last step: I lightly dragged a stiff brush over the drying wood stain to dirty up the pattern a bit and add lots of thin lines. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/fake-wooden-signs-3.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/fake-wooden-signs-3.jpg\" alt=\"How to create a fake wood grain effect\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In the end I was very happy with the result. At a glance it really looks like wood, even pretty close up. The three fake wooden boards are glued onto another piece of foam board, and the words are painted on with regular &#8216;ol white acrylic paint. It&#8217;s fun to paint something where you&#8217;re allowed to be sloppy! I&#8217;m so used to being careful and stressed out with all my projects, trying to keep everything perfect.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/fake-wooden-signs-4.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/fake-wooden-signs-4.jpg\" alt=\"How to create a fake wood grain effect\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>For the &#8220;C&#8217;mon In!&#8221; sign, which was made with foam board and paper mach\u00e9, the wood grainer tool was much harder to use effectively; the surface was just too uneven. Also, the color of the stain came out much darker due to the brown paper, and of course the texture all over is much more uneven due to the edges of all the torn pieces of craft paper. Still, totally fine for a small sign that people will only see briefly on their way into the party. <\/p>\n<p>Related reading: I tried a different technique for a wood grain effect on my <a href=\"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/making-a-foam-board-coffin\/\">fake pine box coffin<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Believe it or not, these signs are just foam board! Plus a little spray paint and wood stain. I experimented with a few techniques, and here&#8217;s what I came up with&#8230; For the big Voodoo Bayou sign, I started by cutting out my foam board shapes and spray painting them with a light tan color. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23,139,19,60,11,9,138,140,141],"class_list":["post-807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-decoration","tag-fake-wood","tag-foam-board","tag-halloween-decorations","tag-painting","tag-tutorial","tag-wood","tag-wood-grain","tag-wooden-sign"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=807"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5873,"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807\/revisions\/5873"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manningkrull.com\/manningmakesstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}