I have paint & a paint brush. Am I an artist?

Been looking at some blogs lately that have these great "vintage" signs with great tutorials. I took some steps from separate blogs to make my own sign. This is my first one and I already have many more planned. i started off with a piece of wood I rescued from my mother's shed during her big move in September. I then made my own faux stencil using Word. I just typed out my words (our wedding date) and used Rockwell Condensed as the font and made the text size 280. I then cute out each letter and number.





Next, I spaced each character on my board and taped them on. I traced an outline of each one using a ball point pen. I used a lot of pressure so as to leave a "stencil" of each letter on the wood.

See the outline I left just by using pressure with my pen???

I used "Americana" brand acrylic paint from Hobby Lobby. This brand is only 99 cents so I love it. I am using a shade of red to match my bedroom. This is for the master suite at the Triple P. I just painted the letters using one of the many paint brushes in my combo pack of brushes I got at HL since I am not really an artist and have no idea about paint brushes or paint or wood or stencils or changing a flat tire or musical instruments or 4-wheel drive trucks or NOT burning bacon or wait a minute, where was I...

Next, I used some of the same brand of paint only in black and did some hodge podge painting over the letters to give it an older look.

Moving on to the sanding...once the paint was dry, I used a sheet of 150 sand paper and made circular motions all over the sign to distress it a bit more. Libby helped with this and she is one mean sander!

Then the staining! Used a rag to lightly stain the whole thing. I put more in some places then others and then rubbed it all around.

Now, if I can just get the husband to put some picture hangers on the back and get it on the wall!!!