Want to bring your wood crafts up to the next level? Check out all of these cool ways to embellish wood–there’s a lot more to be done than just painting!
12 Ways to Embellish Wood
1. Decoupage it. With your favorite papers and a pot of Mod Podge, you can completely transform a wooden surface.
2. Draw on it. You can’t do this with every pen, but with the right supplies, you can embellish wood with drawings done by hand.
3. Engrave it. The techniques that I discuss here in my tutorial on engraving rocks with a Dremel will also work to embellish wood.
4. Make it shine. Sometimes all wood really needs is a way to make the grain stand out. Here are some non-toxic alternatives to polyurethane.
5. Paint it. Start with a great primer and end with a great sealant–in between the two, be as creative as you’d like!
6. Polish it. Perhaps your wood project needs nothing more elaborate than this natural, homemade wood polish.
7. Stain wood with liquid watercolors. This is one of my favorite ways to embellish wood, as I’m sure you can tell if you’ve been reading here at CAGW for any amount of time. The technique is super easy (and super cheap!), and the results are beautiful and saturated with color.
8. Stencil it. Scroll down through this post to see how simple it is to stencil onto wood.
9. Transfer images to it. It requires a good gel medium, but with that in hand, you can transfer printed images to wood.
10. Transfer with waxed paper. The results aren’t quite as nice as with acrylic gel medium, but I doubt that you have acrylic gel medium in your house the way that you probably do waxed paper.
11. Use milk paint. There are several store-bought versions of milk paint now available, or you can make your own.
12. Wood burn it. Depending on the type of wood that you use, this can be a simple project or a little more time-consuming. Hardwoods take longer to burn into, so be patient!