Pottery Barn Bingo Board Copy Cat

When I saw the Pottery Barn Bingo board I knew I had to have it. It measures 40x40, is hand painted, and was priced at 149.00- not too bad for pottery barn. I decided this would be the item I'd ask my husband to get me for Christmas. Well... by the time we got around to ordering these were unavailable. I searched ebay and craigslist in hopes of finding one, but no luck. So, I decided to make it myself. When thinking about how I would accomplish this, my first thought was to use the picture from the PB catalog, print it on a transparency and project it onto my wood. (I happen to own an overhead projector) After tracing the whole image onto a piece of MDF that Mr. Right had left over in the garage, I realized it needed to be painted first- UGH! However, that made me think a little more about the design and I decided to go about it completely differently. First I wanted the numbers to be customized to our family, so I took all of our birth dates, wedding date, baptism date, etc. and plotted it on a piece of paper. Now, we have a ton of September birthdays, so it was a little tricky, but I was able to do it. I also decided to use vinyl as a stencil- I wanted everything to be painted so I could do some distressing at the end. Here's the original PB bingo board:
Here's an up close of my copycat. I decided not to distress it all over- I think I was mostly afraid I would damage it too much. Look closely and you'll see the following dates:

7-14-90 Wedding date, 11-9-64 Mr. Rights Bday, 3-30-90 my baptism date, 9-11-89 my 20's bday, (Now it gets a little trickier) 9-3-69 my bday, 9-25-92 my 17's bday, 8-11-97 my 12's bday, 11-16-98 my 11's bday, 9-29-03 my 6's bday, 1-22-09 my babies bday, 4/91 the month Mr. Right and I were sealed in the Arizona Temple, the number 6 for all our six beautiful children, the number 2 because we bought our house 2-2-02, and finally the number 10 because I made this in 2010.

And here's how I did it... Here's the MDF (this scrap piece was 29 inches wide and 40 plus inches long so I taped it off to make a 29x29 square (a little smaller than the PB one) I then painted 2 coats of creamy white.

Next I taped off my center square and penciled in my bingo grid. Then I cut out BINGO in vinyl on my circuit. This is blackoak font- I thought it matched the PB font perfectly. For the O, I just placed a star over the O (I have the sure cuts a lot (SCAL) software for my circuit- I HIGHLY recommend it- go to scrappingtable.com for more information

Five coats of Ralph Lauren Longjohn red on the border, over the vinyl. Then carefully peel off the vinyl.
I made a little hole using tweezers, then peeled off.

Next I cut all of my numbers with my cricut using Headline A regular font. I saved the actual numbers for a future project and just used the negative as a stencil. If I had known from the beginning I wasn't going to use vinyl I would have cut my numbers out of stencil paper.

I painted the inside of the numbers black and carefully removed the vinyl after the paint was mostly dry. At this point I had to cut off the extra 12 or so inches of my MDF board. This should really have been done first, but I'm participating in Shanty2Chic "I did it without my hubby" post and I was a bit nervous about using the circular saw while he was at work. So, with Mr. Right standing close by I used a circular saw and cut off the excess board (Not as scary of an experience as I had anticipated- yea me!) I then painted the raw edge, sanded up the upper edges and applied a coat of Ralph Lauren Smoke glaze to antique it a bit. I really love how it turned out and my kids love finding their special day on the board. Tell me what you think. Oh, by the way, I finally found the PB Bingo board on ebay- Buy it now for $329.00- "How ridiculous," I thought. But when I checked it the next day, it had SOLD! Lucky for me I made mine with all materials I already owned. Hope you enjoyed, Love, Kelly

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