Turn Inexpensive Plain Jane Crates Into Fancy Decorative Crates!

I purchased two crates for $10 each at Walmart to use as kindling storage on the firewood rack I built. The crates were very plain and boring so I wanted to fancy them up a bit and make them match the firewood rack a little more.

Here are the before pics of the crates:

I decided I would stain the crates and then paint a design on each end of the crates to pretty them up! So, I first stained both crates with Varathane Dark Walnut stain to match the wood on the top and bottom of the firewood rack.

I then created four designs on PicMonkey that I wanted to paint on the crates and printed them out.

I then placed the image over the end of the crate where I wanted the image to be. Using a pen, I traced over the image on the paper, pressing hard enough to leave indentations in the wood.

I then used a very thin, but stiff paint brush and white paint and filled in the indentation of the image.

I repeated this process until the two ends of both crates had a design painted on them. Here are some pics of the other designs:

And here are some pics of the crates in their final location on the firewood rack:

Original article and pictures take http://www.hometalk.com/10880937/turn-inexpensive-plain-jane-crates-into-fancy-decorative-crates site