Stain Stick

Do you ever get knee deep in a building or craft project and go to decide the stain color and basically forget everything….whether you are right or left handed, your social security number and your mother’s maiden name?  I do this constantly.  It must be that whole ‘parenting-lack-of-sleep’ thing.  It makes everything really hard when you can’t even remember what colors look like.  That’s exactly why I created this stain stick.  I was sick and tired of coming to the finishing part of a project and not knowing if I used dark walnut before or Kona.  Or remembering the difference between Early American or American Walnut.  It was like overload on my brain.  So I decided….that’s it….I’m gonna cheat….the stain needs to be in front of my face.  (not on my face….although….I wouldn’t be surprised if my freckles weren’t freckles at all).

So if you want to make this at home…it’s super easy.  Take a scrap piece of wood and sand it down.  You can actually make several of these with different types of wood so that you can see how the stain reacts differently to each species.  Tape off intervals.

Break out the stain…I used all Varathane (Rust-Oleum) brand stains for this….

Start at the top section and do your first stain….apply it with a paper towel so you don’t get too much bleeding…

Wipe excess and then do the next section with the second type of stain…

We like to build with generic white wood a lot so you can really see the difference here but if you use yellow pine or oak you probably will see the colors develop differently.

At the end, here is my board as it was drying…

I added a little cup hook on the end and some labels for the colors and now I know exactly what each color looks like.  This is really helpful if you want to build something to match a store-bought piece.  You can just take your stain stick and compare the colors next to the dresser or the coffee table or whatever.  Or maybe your floor got a deep scratch and you want to fix it but don’t know the color?  Just take your stain stick, lay it down on the floor and see what color (or colors) you can blend to repair.  I did seal my stick with a couple coats of poly just simply because I always poly everything and it can affect the color so keep that in mind.  At first I was thinking….this is probably just helpful to me….but so far, I have pulled this thing out on six different occasions and so I figured, if it helps me, it can probably help you!

Hooray for stain sticks and not losing our brain!

You know I had to squeeze my little ones in this post somehow, right?!

So basically this photo is the best thing ever…..

That is so Weston.  Constantly just GOING FOR IT.  He teaches me so much.  He teaches me to go for the things I want, push fear aside, challenge everything, and just be me.  That being weirdly excited about stain sticks is ok.  And that leaves are meant to be thrown like nature’s confetti!

p.s. a ton of different magazines are only $5 today if you need a teacher/friend/co-worker present 🙂  Click here to see which ones.