Waterbed Door

My co-worker is such a sweetie.  She puts up with me day after day and very kindly listens to my endless driveling about junk.  Her birthday is coming up and when I asked her what she wanted, she said, "If you want, you could make me a sign for my door out of some of your junk".  (Yesssss!)

I started by playing around in PrintShop until I was happy with a design.  (I used chocolate tones - because, well,  she's just crazy about chocolate)

I must have had "door" on my mind because I found this old door that came from the pedestal of our old waterbed when I was scrounging around for something to use as a base.

I think it appealed to me because it has those chocolate colors going on.

There was plenty of room on either side of the print when I started laying it out, so I decided to make some stars to fill the gaps.  I printed the stars on white cardstock and then glued them to a piece of cardboard and cut them out with my Tomboy utility knife.  (I love my Tomboy tools!)

The toothpick and ice pick were used to thread the stars onto a burlap string.

It was needing some contrast, so used black spray paint on the edges of the door and an 8 x 11.5 piece of heavy cardboard to place under the print black.  I also gave the stars and the print a couple of coats of clear acrylic spray to protect and waterproof them.  Hopefully they will withstand this awful Iowa humidity!

When it was finished I realized I hadn't made a sign for her door, I'd made a sign out of a door.  Whoops!

Oh well, she said a sign probably wouldn't work on the door anyway because of the glass.  She showed me a picture of her porch... authentic to-die-for white beadboard!  I think this will work just fine on her awesome authentic wall.

p.s.  It was hard for me not to add a "t" and make it say "the CUTE family" because that is true too!

I'm linking this little gift idea up at: