Pinned it. Made it.: Eat

So a long time ago I was watching "Cougar Town", yeah I am not proud of this, but hey it was on after Modern Family and sometimes the husband and I would get suckered into watching it. I am not saying its a bad show, but its like watching Gilmore Girls on crack because the entire show is nothing but constant female banter. It was entertaining. Let's just leave it at that.

Anyhow, every time we watched the show I was always enamored by the EAT sign that Jules had up in her kitchen. Now I am generally not someone who puts up signs in her house that say "Family, Memories, Dreams" etc. Its just not my style. But for some reason stating the obvious in the Kitchen just felt right. It's almost comical. And I think that is why I like it so much. Also I had the perfect little wall space for it in our new casa so I just went for it.

I went to Michael's first to buy the letters, but they were fresh out of E's and since I wanted the letters to match (although doing different letters could be cool - tip for future word art) I had to go elsewhere. I ended up finding these specific letters at Walmart which was surprising. I originally went in for dog food and just happened to stumble across the craft section (it was on the 2nd floor in the far back corner in the complete opposite direction of the dog food - I can't help myself sometimes). I also liked the font A LOT better then the one's that Michael's had so I was even happier and of course they were cheaper (like $1+ per letter).

So I was bad and totally didn't take a picture of them in their original state. This is how they looked after I spray painted them Nickel. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what color to paint them and decided to copy the main finish that was present in the kitchen. I thought they would look cool sort of blending in and not standing out, but as you can see in my first picture they blend in too much. We had friends over for Labor Day and everyone said I needed to paint them something different. Sooo I was out-voted on my original design choice.

Which then led me to creating a paint color that would match the valance that I had just made above the sink. It's like a rust/red/orange color. After a few trials I finally ended up with a color that I could live with. Not too red, not too orange and not too dingy from being over-mixed.

I painted it with 2 coats and wasn't happy. I thought the Nickel letters looked better and was frustrated that I just didn't keep my original design plan. I mean I am in the kitchen more then anyone else so my opinion should matter most right?

Well I didn't want to give up hope so I grabbed my trusty distressing ink pad and thought I would add a little something to the letters so they didn't look so flat.

And the ink pad saves the day again and again. It's really hard to see how great the difference is in the pictures, but it was like night and day.

Again hard to see the details, but this sort of shows you how it fits in the kitchen. I love it because its the first thing your eyes are drawn to when you walk-in and in case anyone is confused as to what room they are in, this little signs lends you a helping hand.