Cracked finished wooden boards-DIY backgrounds for food pictures

I have recently started to put together a collection of wooden boards and textured finished cards to use as backgrounds for food photos. Often you see beautiful food photos taken on rustic aged wooden tables, boards and they look really great.I googled and watched you tube videos on how to create different finishes. With some ideas pencilled down, I set about sourcing some off cuts of wood. First I raided the garage and found a couple of bits of wood that were old  plywood drawer bases. Next I went to my local builders yard and looked around to see if I could pick up some odd off cuts of wood. I was lucky as my local store cuts wood to size and has a box of small of off cuts that are discarded  and you can buy them for a small cost.I paid between fifty pence to one pound each  for a couple of bits of wood.

I also went to the local garden centre and bought a small piece of decking approx 18 square. Lastly looking and feeling like an idiot I asked the young assistant if they had any “old” wood off cuts I could purchase.After staring at me with a quizzical look he pointed me to a rubbish area and grunted look there. I rummaged through rubbish  old wood, feeling like a tramp and seriously trying to contain my embarrassment as the young lad starred at me in disbelief probably thinking I was eccentric. I managed to retrieve three battered pieces which  looked like old fencing. They were truly weathered from the rain and were covered in sticky tree sap in places but looked really rustic. Armed with my find I was really excited to get home to venture on my new project but before I could do that I had to pick up some painting supplies.

My next stop was a paint shop,I bought some mini emulsion sample paint pots, some small acrylic paints, some pva glue, wire wool, sand paper  and some in expensive brushes. I was excited as my project was finally going to commence. All these supplies will enable me to create some different finishes, today I am going to share my first project of creating cracked finish wooden boards, I hope to share more tutorials using my purchases above in later posts.

Project one- Cracked finished wooden boards.

Materials:

Two small plywood boards ( any size of your choice)
PVA glue
Acrylic paint (light pink) ( light blue for blue board)
Dulux emulsion paint sample pots (dark pink) (Dark blue for blue board)
2 paint brushes
2 old rags (old T shirt cut into squares )
Bin liner
Sand paper
Hair Dryer

Method:

1.Open out the bin liner and put it on the table so that you don’t mess up your table.
2.Sand any rough edges from the wood so that you don’t get splinters from it.
3. Damp one of the rags with water and wipe the wooden board to clean off any dust.

         Step 4                                                    Step 6                                                Step 7

4. Paint the wooden board with your base colour which should be darker than the top colour so that when
we put the lighter colour on top the darker colour will show through from underneath.
5. Leave the board to dry totally and wash your brush and dry it on the second rag.
6. Once the board is dry, we are going to paint it with the pva glue. This stage is important as you must choose which direction you want your cracks to form and paint the pva glue in that direction only.
7. The amount of glue you paint on the wood will determine the size of the cracked finish. For a lighter crack finish paint a thin layer of glue, for larger more prominent crack finish paint thicker layer of glue but remember always paint the glue in one direction.

            Step 8                                                Step 10

8. Immediately on top of the wet glue with a clean brush paint a thin layer of your acrylic paint. Take care to paint it lightly with gentle strokes as not to lift the glue off and also paint  in the same direction .
9. You don’t have to be too careful with the painting, you get a better finish if you get some odd patches and the final  finish will be more natural.
10. Once the acrylic paint is on the wood, immediately dry the paint on the wooden board with the hair dryer or heat gun. The hot heat will dry the paint and as its drying you will see cracks appearing in the painted surface.

                                                                  Step 11

11. Once the paint is semi dry leave the board to air dry for another 24 hours before using it.

You can see I created a blue board and a pink board. The cracking on the blue board is more definite as I had painted a thicker layer of glue and I had also painted the glue diagonally  and with random brush strokes to change the pattern of the cracking.

Here you can see the finished boards in my food photos.