Altered Brachacki Pull to Open sign

[Audrey]

I've had a poster of the pull to open sign for a while, specifically the 2005 type. While I do like it, it's not my favorite design by any means. That award goes to the 1966 prop. It occurred to me, probably later than it should've, that I could likely do it up in a day (untrue) with a bit of effort (more than that).

So, armed with this thought and a severe deficit on forethought, I grabbed a piece of wood and went at it with spraypaint.
Given that I'm:
A) Incredibly inexperienced with any kind of painting or designing
B) Not giving this enough thought at the time
C) In my infinite wisdom, painting this at night for whatever reason
It didn't turn out too well, but I figure that one's first attempt is rarely their strongest or smartest.


After realizing that Plan A wasn't very solid and didn't look good, I turned to Plan B, and used some acrylic paint, blacks, blues and the like, to give it a more proper look.
One not-short-enough evening in the awful heat and humidity and I had this:


Much better. At this point, my dad, who is very fluent in I-Know-A-Guy, said he'd be able to get a stencil made for the text, saving me a lot of effort for little payoff by manually printing/cutting out letters.
Unfortunately, this was not the one-day thing I was hoping for, and took two weeks to get done (bunched up client list I would assume?)
Once I knew the stencil would be done the following day, I repainted the sign again, going at it with stronger blues to give it something resembling the original style, which I covered up afterwards with black


(This interim step is ultimately covered up but I still very much like how it looked)


And there's the finalized background.
Once this was all set up and dried, it was time for the text. Mixing together a variety of light blues, beige, and white, I applied and painted over the stencil, slowly changing the "formula" over time by adding more or less blue, white etc. This is ultimately mostly covered but comes through in the final thing.


After this dried came another layer, made up of a mix of white, pink and beige.


After all that, I dabbed and wiped at it with some paper towels which gave it a nice, semi-bubbly (definitely not the most apt descriptor but you might be able to see what I mean) "finish", and then it was time to dry and remove the stencil.
This took a LOT of peeling. A lot. I don't envy myself or my dad if we decide to do this again.


And, after all was said and done, the moment of truth:


Suffice to say I am VERY happy with this, and with the way my dad is talking we may be outfitting a certain blue box home for this in the future.
But for now, I'm still incredibly proud of this especially as a first foray into any kind of painting. Hopefully you all will like it as well.

[russellsuthern]

We like it!   



Russell

[Rob]

This is a brilliant turnout!

[davidnagel]

That came out lovely! Good work.

[moonbeam]

That does look really amazing!