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Transforming Stryofoam to Wood!

 

Have you ever wanted to make a rustic large wood sign but you just don't have it in your budget or you are worried about the weight that this type of sign would have! I have your solution..... You can easily make styrofoam mimic the look of wood! That way you achieve the desired look with less cost, weight and construction. A WIN WIN WIN!!

 

Foam Board

Foam Board

You will need to start by buying the styrofoam most home improvement stores stock it. **here is a clue when searching for it (otherwise you will be lost and when you ask for styrofoam people look at you like your crazy) the intended use styrofoam is insulation! The type we purchase come in 4ft X 8ft sheets and they are sold at different thicknesses they range in price from $8-$20 per sheet. They also sell a smaller 2ft X 2ft version (I believe) it seemed a little denser but it was more pricey.  I'd rather have a whole sheet with left over then more density. Be prepared when you purchase (and learn from our mistakes) they are huge and awkward to put in your vehicle, the first couple times we tried to awkwardly tie them down and now we have realized that most of the time if you put some weight on the top of them they won't go anywhere!

Now the fun begins!

First you want to map out the size of the sign you want, I'm my case I wanted a 5ft tall sign by 2 1/2 ft wide, you can then cut that down.

This process is a lot easier if you have a heat knife, but would work with a regular knife or razor blade. You achieve much cleaner edges with a heat knife and it is much easier to paint when they are smooth. The one we use is owned by the church we do VBS for, they bought it for VBS because so many of our elements are made from styrofoam. The one we use is an industrial tool but you can buy something less intense and can be bought at michael's or another craft stores.

 

This thing is a game changer though, you just pull the trigger and it heats the blade and it then slides through the styro like butter! It was an investment for them but I think it is worth it if you plan on doing large scale projects. 

 

So after I had the basic size I then decided the width of the boards since it was (2 1/2ft) 30 inches wide I decided 10 inch planks would be perfect! It doesn't have to be perfect but even is better then having completely random boards unless that's the look your going for. Another handy thing with the styro is there are hash mark with measurement indicators so you can cut along those lines, as a matter of fact I think that's how I decided my board width (5 hashlines) I can't be bothered with a tape measurer, ain't nobody got time for that...

I then just made a v type of shape indentation along the length of the board, making sure to not cut all the way though the styro. Your basically wanting to give the boards "separation" while still being connected. The ends is where you can cut in and give a more board like appearance notching a true division so they look like boards.

I also added some gashes to make some knot looking things in the wood, I made them diamond shaped following with the "grain" of the wood.  

The next step is to add the first layer of brown to the wood, I used a reddish brown color. I didn't take a picture of that step because I immediately went and grabbed a darker color to tone down the red in the brown color (I wasn't feeling that red). Also working quickly made it easier to blend the colors together, wood doesn't have sharp edges so you want a smooth transition. You want to pick the direction of your grain and keep the paint following in that direction. Also make sure to focus the darker colors along the edges and in the deep grooves.

I moved on to a darker almost black color, and really intensify those grooves.

 

 

Adding the black makes it really pop and the boards really look like boards, you want to make sure to deepen those knots with black so that it gives them dimension.

We made this particular sign for Vacation Bible School decorations so I then painted an image on the sign to match the decor of VBS.

Excuse the hideous outfit but as you can tell this type of sign is extremely light, ideal for VBS decorations.

I hope this helped you in your transformation of styrofoam to wood!

-Rachel

Thursday 04.21.16
Posted by Leah Henriksen
 

Mirrored Creations, who are WE?

Hey Readers and Hopefully future followers- Welcome to our BLOG!

We decided to make a blog for Mirrored Creations so we could share a little bit more about ourselves, our lives, and the passion we pour in to our art. For our first post we thought we'd introduce ourselves and tell you a little about Mirrored Creations, and where we came from!

Our names are Leah and Rachel and we are twenty-something year old twins that do ALOT of art! In all seriousness we have a passion for all things having to do with art, creating, dreaming, and crafting.

Lets start from the beginning, we both discovered this artistic ability at a pretty young age. As we grew our skills developed, and we were fortunate to spend some time with a local artist (and fabulous woman) who encouraged us to be fearless in art. The experiences we had with her, and her passion for art rubbed off on us and we believe truly shaped our future in a way she probably does even realize! Anywho, as we got older art became harder to enjoy. It was just so expensive to buy a canvas and paint for a "for-funzies" project, when in reality we both just felt the urge to paint but didn't really have necessary projects nor wallspace left.

It all changed one week when our friend asked if we'd be interested in painting a mural for her dad. She said she knew we were AMAZING painters (thanks girl) and that we could knock it out of the park and her dad would PAY US to do it. It was shocking to imagine to get paid to do our passion. One star wars garage later and we were hooked!

Starwars Garage

Starwars Garage

Rachel standing Proudly with her YODA!

Rachel standing Proudly with her YODA!

Leah showing her excitement!

Leah showing her excitement!

 

We now do all sorts of custom artwork for people to display in their homes and businesses. It keeps us VERY busy since we both have full time jobs working for the local school district. We would love to eventually quit our jobs and pursue art as our full time passion and profession!

Yikes, I didn't even cover the "Mirrored" part of Mirrored-Creations! We are actually Mirrored Twins (Leah is left handed and Rachel is right handed) and these are our CREATIONS... so Mirrored Creations it was!

We are going to use this blog to tell you about some of our fun projects we've done in the past and all of our future exciting plans! We will try and give great DIY tips of what, or more commonly what-NOT to do!

Thanks for reading our very first post and visiting our page! We already feel like we're getting to know you all more!

-Leah & Rachel

Mirrored Creations

Wednesday 04.13.16
Posted by Leah Henriksen
 

Gator Nation

Today was one LONG... but productive day! We had the opportunity to do some awesome murals at a local high school, and decided to take ya'll along the way in our MURAL PROCESS! These murals were commissioned by the site administrator to build school spirit and encourage quality attributes in the students. The paintings were going to be on the back wall of the stage in the auditorium and in their main student hallway. We knew this was going to prove to be a busy day of painting.

Arriving at the school we decided to tackle the large Gator on stage FIRST! To begin the project we used an old school classroom projector (can I get a shout out for classic classroom tools) to project their logo on the wall.

 

Deciding the size and placemen

Deciding the size and placemen

Projecting our Image-- we use this process for large scale mural

Projecting our Image-- we use this process for large scale mural

Once we had our placement decided we used chalk to draw our paint lines, this can get complicated so we try and keep the lines simple and refer back to our original image for the details and freehand those details while painting.

 

Some of the colors going up!

Some of the colors going up!

Rachel doing what she does best- Highlights!

Rachel doing what she does best- Highlights!

With the base colors on the wall we will then choose complementary highlight colors and go back and "texturize" the flat one color paint. We're not sure if the word texturize is the "correct" art world term but its one we've always used and was inspired by our mentor-- so it may be used by us often in this blog and when we say it we mean that we're adding additional colors to add depth to a piece of art. After texturizing the massive gator we then went back and added a white border to pop the piece off the wall. We are pretty satisfied with the finished product!

 

Totally not posed photo!

Totally not posed photo!

Rachel being crazy!

Rachel being crazy!

A finished product!

A finished product!

After lunch we tackled the second portion of the project, motivational words in the main office hallway aimed at encouraging students. This is a longer hallway (forgive me for not having an actual measurement-- hey I'm an artist) and the principal wanted to place important motivational words on ceiling beams. We had 4 beams and 5 motivational saying so the word GRADUATE was decided to go over the exit doors because it is their main focus! Check out my excitement before starting!

 

Pre-Painting Excitement!

Pre-Painting Excitement!

The words/sayings chosen were as follows:

GRADUATE

PERSEVERANCE= SUCCESS

THINK, THINK, THINK

PLAN & PREPARE

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

So we got started on the first beam....

First beam... notice anything?

First beam... notice anything?

After finishing the first side of our first beam we noticed something TERRIBLE, let us know in the comments if you see what we saw? .... did you? Yep... perseverance is definitely spelt wrong, and we discovered it is a difficult word to spell correctly. Cue Leah's almost breakdown, it was depressing.

We hate spelling!

We hate spelling!

We didn't let this get us down.... we had to track down the wall color (in the creepy basement- yikes) and made our adjustments to the spelling error. This minor (felt major at the time) problem was solved after a couple corrective coats of paint. These words took us FOREVER to finish and were mind numbing, especially since they required two coats of paint!

 

Progress

Progress

The last big decision we had to make was when we got to the word GRADUATE above the doors. This was a fight between us (twins don't ALWAYS agree). We couldn't decide whether to center the word graduate above the doors or on the wall?!?! This was difficult because the doors were obviously off centered on the wall... we ultimately had to call a third party and after a couple picture messages and a speaker phone "argument" conversation... a decision was made. Can you tell what we decided?

Big Decisions

Big Decisions

Taking a step back

Taking a step back

After taking a step back we decided centering on the wall was the best option so the words lined up when looking at them sequentially. We were very happy with the results.

 

Happy finished faces!

Happy finished faces!

After around an 8 hour day we were definitely POOPED but extremely satisfied with another project well done and a very satisfied customer! Thanks for reading and sharing our day's experiences with us!

-Lovingly Written by LEAH of Mirrored Creations

Sunday 01.18.15
Posted by Leah Henriksen
 

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