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I made these four plaques over the last couple weeks. The autumn one was first and I made that one out of a nice piece of ~1/4" thick maple that I found in the wood bin. When I went looking for more wood for the next designs, I found that I don't have a lot of 1/4" hardwood and decided that since I will only be using these for product photos, I would make them with 1/4" Baltic birch plywood. In the end, I find that they do not look as nice as the maple one because the grain is just not visible enough in the plywood, but I had to do what I had to do, and the painted versions did look pretty good on the birch. You can see the painted and unpainted versions in the photos.

In my instructions, I suggested using slightly thicker hardwood because I have had bad luck with the thin stuff warping over time, but of course my instructions are only suggestions and people can certainly use thinner stuff if they like.

The cutting was fairly easy on these overall. The only somewhat tricky part is the lettering on the cattails plaque which needs a little more care to avoid breaking the curls. I included step by step photos in the pattern for the lettering in order to help ensure that people can cut them with minimal chance of breaking off a piece.

Choosing colors was a bit of a challenge for me. While I generally prefer to stain my projects, allowing the wood grain to show through the colors, there were a couple of spots where I was not happy with the result and chose to paint more solidly. If you look closely at the cattails and grass in the third plaque and the sunflowers themselves in the fourth plaque, you can see that the grain is pretty much entirely covered by the paint. I felt that the colors just didn't look very good until I had complete coverage on these.

These patterns are all up on our site if you are interested.

Thank you for looking.

Gallery

Comments

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1,106 Posts
Very nice! These will be great to display on one's porch.
 

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233 Posts
would brighten anyone's porch or yard…good luck with these designs
 

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4,010 Posts
i really like the signs and i really like them myself in the maple or something like it that shows the very nice wood grain, im always so impressed with your cutting ability keith, but at this stage of the game i guess you should be good at it, its always great to see what your doing these days, thanks for showing.
 

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657 Posts
Those are great looking signs. Adding to my favorites.
 

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Cleaver! Great project thanks for sharing with us!
 

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Love your patterns Keith! I love the painted versions though for the wood purists I can see that some inlay detail could be done on these.
 

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Thanks guys! I enjoyed making these and am glad that you like them.
 

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Very nice Keith

Jamie
 
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