Today is one of those posts that I am just so excited about, I am sharing it with you less than 12 hours after I finished it.  I just can’t hold out!

Now that my first Christmas mantel is complete, I am moving on to the other side of the fireplace.  Since I just updated it with stacked stone, I wanted a really rustic look (similar to last year) and so I knew I was going to make another one of my (infamous) pallet signs.

Assembly was exactly like the previous versions, and once again I stained the wood dark brown so the design would show up well.

So far I’ve only stenciled and painted the previous designs so this time I wanted to do something more dimensional.  I had a couple bags of wood slice vase filler left over from my dollar store wood slice pumpkin project and I thought they would be easy to work with.


To go with the rustic/woodsy theme I decided to use a stag head silhouette.  They seem to be everywhere and so I thought I would jump onto that bandwagon.  I just googled “Deer Head Silhouette” and then printed one out that was approximately 3 feet x 4 feet tall.:

Then I used a pencil to trace the design by pressing heavily on the line.  The pencil leaves a dent in the soft wood that is very easy to see:

And then it was just a matter of gluing on the slices:

One by one..

..by one. 
The entire process took me a little under 6 hours.  But when I was done, I was SOOO happy with the result:

I didn’t add anything else.  (See? Easiest tutorial ever!)  I propped the sign up on my mantel (the full reveal is coming up this weekend) and that was it.

When I was conceptualizing the project I was actually worried you wouldn’t be able to tell what the silhouette shape was. I thought you would be too distracted by the texture/shape of the slices:
But I don’t think that is the case at all.  It is abundantly clear that it is a deer’s head. And from a distance back, you barely can see the individual slices:
This has definitely become one of my most favorite projects I’ve done.  I will be sad when the holidays are over and I have to take it down.  I may need to go with a ‘hunting lodge’ theme living room, so I can leave it up all year round!