31 {More} Days of Pinterest: Day 7 Beadboard American Flag

I have a confession to make. I'm no artist. Wait, this isn't news?

I do, however, have a talent for mentally deconstructing someone else's projects and figuring out how to recreate them. Most of the time that's as far as it gets, but when I saw this beadboard flag at the Simply Kierste blog, I knew I could actually do this.

No, seriously. I had everything I needed downstairs in the basement.

I had lots of beadboard from when we built the house--it was used on the underside ceiling of the front porch:

I had the paint:

And I had the Frog Tape I love so very much.

I started by cutting a length of the beadboard to 3 sections of 16"x20", and hammered them together. The pieces are tongue and groove, but still need a bit of er, "persuading" every so often.

Once I got them together, they were kind of wobbly, so I nailed some 1" lattice on the back as stabilizers.

Although the pieces were the color that I wanted the base to be (kind of an off-white), it was outdoor paint. I hit it with some spray primer, then went over it with a couple of coats of Rustoleum's Heirloom White.

Once that had cured, I taped off the corner where I wanted the blue, and just started painting. I don't have any pictures because I inadvertently deleted them instead of saving them.
But the instructions on the original pin are very good, so follow them.

I cut out a reverse stencil of the star from cardstock, and held it in place when I painted the blue. I wasn't worried about crisp lines because that's not what this project is about. It's supposed to look like it's been around for awhile.

I also taped off the different rows of color because the blending of colors was bothering me. That added more time to the overall project because I couldn't tape on wet paint.

Here's the finished flag:

I'm undecided whether to leave it like this or to distress it with a palm sander. I'm not loving the shiny red, but maybe once I hit it with a good sanding it'll calm down some.

Start to finish, this was a approximately 4 hour project. Most of that was waiting for sections of paint to dry so I could tape off the next color and go.

To see my other 31 {More}Days of Pinterest projects, click on the image below, and it will take you to my original post.