pottery barn knock-off spoon & fork wall art

Alright. So Pottery Barn has this cool fork and spoon wall art set. I love it. I do not love so much the price tag: $279 plus &30 for shipping. Ouch. So I set out to plagiarize it.

Tutorial after the jump!

I had found these on Graphics Fairy a couple months ago. I loved them then, but didn't have anything in mind at the time so I saved them in the idea file.

Initially I planned to buy some canvases and trace the images on with my projector, but as you can see, the detailing in this flatware is not a joke. I envisioned myself meticulously tracing all that detail and then going over it again with my trusty acrylic paint marker and then I blacked out.

I also knew it would be difficult to find long, narrow canvases and Cthulu knows there's no way I'm paying to have some custom canvases made.

Plan B!! I scavenged in my garage for some wood to use. We had some 1x12 boards that were already cut to 3 feet long, but then I saw these:

Three feet by one foot, made of wood, with a cool oval shape. Perfect! They were part of a set of three that used to hang on our walls but since we moved I haven't really had a place for them. So I flipped them over and painted the backs with Krylon satin finish paint in Almond.

While they dried, I used Microsoft Picture Manager to split the spoon and fork images into three equal pieces so they'd print out large enough for the project. The images were split like this, and then I printed them at 8x10 inches:

I cut them out with sharp, tiny scissors and taped them together on the backside at the seams. After the paint dried completely I Mod Podged the images down.

Once THAT dried, I printed out the words 'spoon' and 'fork' in French in a pretty font. I used the tried-and-true method of "trace, flip, scribble" to get the outline of the words onto the panels. The PB version doesn't have this, but I did it because my motto is 'why leave well enough alone?' Actually it's not a motto so much as it's a lifestyle choice.

Of course, if you're fancy and you have a Cricut or a Silhouette, you could use that too.

Then I painted the letters in with my acrylic marker and called it a day. The dimensions on mine are three feet by one feet each, but you could size them anyway you want. I still think that a couple of 1x12 planks would work beautifully, and of course if you wanted to Podge them onto the same canvas (or whatever surface, as long as it's big enough) that works too.

The point is that these are totally makeable by a complete amateur like me in just three hours, and that includes drying time. All it cost me was $2.79 for the spray paint. The Mod Podge and wood planks I had on hand and the spoon and fork were printed at home using free images. Oh, and The Graphics Fairy has a matching vintage butter knife graphic, too. I may actually do that one as well, since I have an extra oval plank left...

Et voila!

I'm linking to: