Remember the foot board that I purchased at the St. Anthony Park sales last summer?

There it is peeking out from behind the little cupboard.

The sellers said they were using the headboard that matched this piece, but they had no use for the foot board.  I think I paid around $5 for it.  I’m sure when they put it out they wondered if anyone in their right mind would purchase a lone foot board.

My initial plan was to either add a shelf (like I did here) or turn it into a chalkboard (like I did here).  But if you’ve read my blog for very long you are probably beginning to realize that I rarely stick with my initial plan.

Instead I decided to turn it into a Christmas themed sign, adding hooks across the bottom for hanging stockings.

I started by painting the foot board in Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth.  Next I had to go back to my sign making roots.  I dug out my alphabet stencils to use as a guide, but rather than stenciling each letter I just traced them with pencil …

then went back and painted them in by hand.

I have been totally spoiled with the larger scale furniture transfers from Prima Marketing.  Those are so easy to apply and usually go on pretty quickly.  Hand painting letters is a bit trickier, and I’m never fully satisfied with my work.

But I reminded myself that a rustic, hand painted look was what I was going for so it didn’t have to be perfect.

Once I had the lettering painted I decided to fill in the rest of the space with some sections from the Christmas Farm stencil that I’ve been using on lots of projects this year (FYI – last I checked this stencil was on sale for $11 at Maison de Stencils).

I doctored it up a little this time using a “25” on the truck door rather than the wreath that comes on the stencil.  I also just flipped it over to have the truck facing the other way on one side of my sign.

I pick up old hooks whenever I see them at garage sales, so I dug into my stash and found 4 that were similar.  I painted them using Miss Mustard Seed’s milk paint in Boxwood that was leftover from the chair that I’m going to share in just a minute.

As you can see, they got pretty chippy.  But I’m a fan of chippy.  So I knocked off all of the loose paint and then sprayed them with a shellac type sealer so they wouldn’t be leaving chips of paint everywhere.

I didn’t actually have 4 matching Christmas stockings to hang from the hooks so I experimented with a pitcher and towel for some of my photos …

but then I decided to hang a kid-sized chair from two hooks to see how that would look.

Speaking of which, remember the trio of holiday chairs I shared two weeks ago?  Well, they sold like hotcakes at Reclaiming Beautiful so I found another set of 4 on Facebook Marketplace, picked them up last weekend, painted them, and brought them to the shop on Wednesday.

Three of them got painted in the Dixie Belle Drop Cloth with the Christmas Farm stencil, similar to this one …

I figured those weren’t worth sharing here on the blog since they are basically just a repeat of the ones I shared two weeks ago.

But I decided to try a different look with the 4th one.  I painted it in Miss Mustard Seed’s Boxwood milk paint.  I should back up a minute and mention that these chairs had already been painted multiple times when I got them (in the close up photo below you can see blue and white peeking out beneath the green).  I always do more prep work when painting over existing paint.  In this case I sanded them very thoroughly and then cleaned them with TSP substitute.  I also opted to use the bonding agent in my milk paint because it’s always dicey whether or not milk paint will stick to a previously painted surface.

Normally I wouldn’t choose milk paint for a previously painted piece, but I really wanted this particular shade of green so I went with it.

I painted the chair back using the Dixie Belle Drop Cloth and added a section of the Prima Marketing Gingham Red transfer over that.  Finally, I stenciled the seat using a warm white craft paint.

Adding the stencil totally made this one work.  I used Dixie Belle’s Big Mama’s Butta as a final finish over everything including the transfer.

My friend, and fellow Reclaiming Beautiful vendor, Lisa, gave me the pitcher.  She’d been planning to sell it, but it has a crack in it.  She thought it would work well for photo shoots though, and I have to agree.  It was perfect for this one.

The battery operated lights came from Target last year.  I’m not sure if they have them again this year.

I’m really enjoying working on these smaller holiday projects lately.  I’m not sure when I’ll get back to painting ‘real’ pieces of furniture, it may not be until after the new year.  It’s always good to take a little bit of a break before coming back with fresh ideas, right?

As always, thank you to Dixie Belle Paint Co and Redesign with Prima Marketing for supplying the products used in these projects.