Wood Arrow Decor

A few months ago I made a custom decor piece for my sister’s birthday. She’s been obsessed with arrows for months and I wanted to give her something special. I made a wood canvas with 3 arrows and wrote her kids names on them.

I posted this picture on my instagram of the finished project and I was so overwhelmed by the awesome response I got.

One of my very good friends is having a baby and when she told me the nursery theme is arrows, I knew I needed to make something for the new little man.

I used a table saw cut the wood and the same guided template I created when I made my sister’s decor to make the individual pieces. Normally I start projects with unpainted or unstained wood, but this was a large scrap piece I had from a previous project. I never used to be a hoarder. Actually, I get great joy out of throwing stuff away. I hate clutter. But I have a really difficult time throwing project scraps away because they can always be used in the future for one project or another. ANYWAY….

I made cuts according to the guide for the set of 3 arrows I was working on, but then my creative juices took over. I scrapped the guide and started to work out this vision I had in my head. I was so excited about the layering look in the arrow head I could barely contain myself on the driveway as I was assembling the pieces.

I moved my operation from the driveway to the basement so I could stain and paint the wood. It was pretty windy the day I worked on this and I didn’t want grass blowing onto the wood while it was drying.

I played around with a couple different color patterns, but ultimately, I went with something I thought looked rustic-chic. My friend told me she painted the nursery shades of gray with a mint green accent color. I went with a rich colored stain and white to balance it out. I played around with the placement of white versus stain, but ultimately I went with the stain on the bottom. I tried putting it between the two white arrows, but it was too stripe-looking and immediately annoyed me. So I opted for this unbalanced look, which ironically looks incredibly proportionate because the brown stain is so much heavier than the white paint. Funny how our eyes and our brains play tricks on us like that, right? Or maybe I’m just a crazy lady.

I carried the color scheme through to the next decor piece to make them feel like a set. But I gave this one some flare because it was screaming at me to do something fun.

I fastened each piece with wood glue, but to be safe I used the nail gun to really secure all the wood pieces together.

Here they are in their sweet new baby boy home 🙂

Also, here’s this little guy that I hand painted. It’s the same stain color, just a different take on the arrow theme!

My friends make the sweetest babies! I’m so happy I got the opportunity to be a part of this little Prince’s world before he has even entered it. He’s going to be a mighty little boy!

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