Canada Day Rustic Maple Leaf Sign

This year just happens to be Canada’s 150th birthday — Can you believe it?! I really wanted to create something special in order to celebrate this year. I wanted to devise something that would look a little on the rustic side, and also look just as old as Canada, itself…

After some thought, I decided that I would try to devise a rustic maple leaf sign, using some old barn board!

I headed out to The Project Pile, and dug out the perfect piece of barn board. I sliced the board into two even pieces, using my sliding compound miter saw.

Notice the carpet in the background of this photo?! That’s my bedroom floor… Why the heck would I attempt this project on my bedroom floor?! Well, for one reason only…

For my special little helper, Miss Soffia Rose! She really, really wanted to help, and well, who could ever deny this little cutie?!

I couldn’t find any metal brackets out in the garage, so I grabbed what I could find, and used a couple of wooden shims to fasten the backside of my pieces of barn board together.

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After our boards were fastened, Soffia and I used a piece of chalk to sketch out our maple leaf design.

The nice thing about sketching in chalk, is that if you don’t like something, you can easily erase it with a damp cloth, and start over again!

I used an acrylic paint in the color of Deep Red, to paint my maple leaf and my flag strips, and then used just a plain white acrylic paint for my letters and the year.

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I think that what we ended up with, really captured the old and rustic look that I was going for…

I love how this sign just blends right in with some of my other Canadian antiques and treasures!

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See this antique wooden and cast iron pulley?! This is off of my parents’ 100% Canadian farm. It actually is probably older than Canada, itself!

It would have been used for some sort of hoisting system used to lift hay, straw, and possibly other objects… Definitely a little piece of true Canadian history!

Here are some more pretty pictures for you to enjoy! Happy Canada Day!