Bee! I'm expecting you!

Sooo long ago my mom-in-law gave me a small plank of wood to decorate for a swing in the front of their new house. About a year later I finally got around to making something out of it! Here's what I did...



Ah, the lovely unfinished piece of wood (and my lovely Diet Coke, to show the size ;)

I couldn't quite think of what exactly to do with the swing (paint, modpodge, photo transfer), and then I remembered I had this little book called Lullabies and Poems for Children. I got it when Caleb was around 9 months old from Roger's Gardens in Corona Del Mar. Beautiful place to visit! I read through a few poems and decided on this little on by Emily Dickinson. Perfect!

I drew straight lines with a ruler, wrote out the entire poem in pencil, and began writing over my letters in black ball point pen, trying to copy the same font that was printed in the book.




Looking pretty good. It took a bit of time, ball point pen can be tricky!




All finished writing. I even made an oops on the word "due", but I just sanded it to remove the ink and wrote over it, you can hardly tell, right?! Oh, and I erased as much as I could of the pencil underneath.


I decided to use tea to stain the wood. Just steeped 2 bags of plain ol' Lipton...

...and rubbed away! I did this 3 times, letting each stain dry before starting the next.




All stained. Pretty nice color for a bunch of tea bags!




I applied 3 coats of Mod Podge to the front and back.



All dry...now for the fun part...




And there she is in all her glory.




I have no idea exactly how my step-father-in-law rigged this little beauty, but let's just say he's a master of contraptions, and it swang/swung beautifully.