Tried It, Liked It Tuesday: DIY Wood Painted American Flag

Here's a little DIY craft just in time for the 4th of July. You still have time to make this!


DIY Painted American Flag
adapted from Crafty Butt

Supplies:

• 1 rectangular piece of wood (mine was about 8x11)
• 50 star stickers
• red, white, blue spray paint (I used acrylic paint for part, but recommend spray paint)
• painters tape or masking tape
• sand paper
• tape measurer
• pencil
• primer spray paint (optional)
• paint brush (if using acrylic paint)

The How-To:

Sand the wood to help the paint stick better. If you're using primer, then spray a coat onto the wood and let it dry. Spray 1-2 coats of white paint on the piece of wood.

After the paint has dried, figure out about how wide each stripe will be. For me, each stripe ended up being about 0.6 to 0.7 of an inch (8"divided by 13 stripes). I made little pencil marks along the side. I then taped off a square for the star section of the flag. One thing to be aware of is that there are 7 shorter stripes that line up with the square with the stars and 6 longer stripes below the square. Make sure you take this into account when figuring out the size of your box for the stars. Make sense? Just look at the flag and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Start placing the star stickers into the box. I did my best to line everything up, but I didn't care too much about perfection. I did 5 rows of 6 stars first. Then, I did 4 rows of 5 stars inbetween. The pictures below show you what I did.

Next, I used the blue paint and painted right over those stars. I really do think that spray paint would be better/easier here, in which case you'd want to make sure that you cover the section where you'll be painting the stripes. Make sure you let the paint dry completely. I didn't wait long enough and when I taped the stripes down, it tore up some of the blue paint. I had to go back and fix this and it was annoying.

All right, you're almost there! Now, tape off the stripes that you want to keep white. Don't forget to protect the blue square and stars, too. This took some fenagaling of the tape because my stripes and the tape size didn't match up, but again I wasn't going for perfection. I then used my paint brush to spread on the red paint.

You can either leave your flag as is, or make your flag a little more rustic. You can choose one or all of these options. First, you can take a tea bag that has been soaking in hot water and rub it all over the flag to give a faded yellow color. Pat it dry. You can also take a hammer and hit all over the wood to add some dents and knicks. Finally, you can sand the flag to give it a more distressed look. Just make sure the paint is completely dried before doing any of these options!

Happy 4th of July!!!