The Old Wooden Toolbox

 

I snagged this neat old toolbox in a pawn shop in Florida when we were down there over Christmas break…

 

The orange sticker was the best part about it…

I had my sprayer all set up and was painting some furniture with white paint so I gave this box a coat too.

I wanted to apply some lettering to the one side and thought I’d try a different technique that I read about on someone’s blog.

It all sounded fairly simple but looking back, I think I still prefer using transfer paper but I’m glad I tried it and who knows, maybe I’ll end up taking that route again sometime.

What I did was I typed my lettering in Microsoft word and flipped it. Here are the directions to do this:

1. Insert word art

2. Type the lettering you want

3. Click on text effects

4. Go to 3-D rotation

5. Scroll towards the bottom where it says 3-D rotation options & click on that

6. Set the “x” for 180 degrees

After doing this, I printed it out and taped it to the box at the position I wanted it to be…

The writing looks faint since it’s on the other side of the paper. Next, wet the paper with water using a brush. You want to thoroughly soak it, yet not too much that the paper starts tearing.

It worked better to wet a few letters at a time and then take the edge of a marker cap or anything hard plastic and rub over the letters. This was the tricky part for me. You want to rub hard enough to get the ink to bleed onto your surface but not too hard that you’ll tear the paper.

It works best to not pull up the paper and peek before you’re finished since it can slide around and then it’s kind of messed up.

I did end up going over most of the lettering with a paint marker since it was too faint for me.

I sanded the box and the lettering to distress it.

When I first read about this technique, I thought it might be easier and quicker than my usual carbon paper way but I think it took about the same amount of time and pretty much the same effect. I also think it will work differently for various surfaces. I’m thinking it may not work on a glossy surface..the ink wouldn’t soak in as well or may just smudge.

For now the box serves as a place to store real wood for our fake fireplace… how weird is that?

Thanks for visiting!