Show and Tell Saturday: Burlap Brand Sign

Through Kilani's awesome Anteater submission during our Use It Up week I discovered the Iron Crafter group. It looked like a ton of fun, so I joined in! The last challenge we had was "B is for...". Here is what I put together for it:

My Grandpa and his brother ran a ranch together for many years under a joint brand, but my Grandpa had a brand all picked out if he ever were to register his own brand. D <--  That's the getto keyboard version at least.  A capital D followed by an arrow. Why that? That's his name! Darrow! 

When we named our little guy after my Grandpa, I knew eventually I wanted to make a sign with Grandpa's brand on it for Darrow's room. I just didn't know quite what I wanted to do and I've been putting it off. Finally it got to this past challenge for the Iron Crafter, "B is for...". So I decided that B would be for brand. It took me a few days to figure out how I wanted to go about the project. I finally decided burlap and cardboard (so I guess B is also for burlap). 

Here's how it turned out:

It looks a little unfinished just as it is, but I'm hoping to find a frame that I can put around it. That should finish it off nicely. 

To make this I first started out with a "box" that some photographs were shipped in. 

I cut off one of the flaps and used that as my base.

Next, I took black construction paper and cut out the shape of the D and the arrow that I wanted.

Using my adhesive spray, I attached the letters to the board, and then gave the whole front of the board another thick coating of spray so I could lay the burlap on top.

Once the burlap was stuck well and it had a few minutes to dry, I started "unweaving" the horizontal burlap strings that covered the black letters beneath. To do this I found my smallest pair of scissors and then carefully snipped just the horizontal strands. I clipped the strands right at the edge of the black letters beneath the burlap.

I used a pair of tweezers to grab the string and pull a small tail out.

From there it was easy to just pull the whole strand out.

In the end the vertical strands are left intact, but you can still see the shape of the symbols.

All done pulling out the horizontal strands!

Next I hot glued the edges of the burlap down in the back. 

And I was done!

It doesn't stand out as much as I'd hoped. I should have painted the cardboard white before putting the black paper shapes on it, but oh well. Any ideas to help make it pop? 

And since he hasn't made an appearance on here for a little while, here's Darrow!

He's finally caught up with his growth and his developmental milestones, and really is doing great. This kid cracks us up.