Custom Deck Step

 When we were building our deck last summer I wanted it to have character but not be cluttered with typical 'Deck Junk'. I decided to add more artistic detail by wood bruning a suttle message into the bottom stair backer.  I thought 'Go Gophers' with the Minnesota 'M' was perfect!

I started by printing out a template.  I got the Minnesota 'M's from Google images and typed out the 'Go Gophers' in the size and font I liked.

On the back side of the printed paper, I rubbed oil pastels along the outline of the image/text.

After the oil pastels were on the paper I layed them out on the board and taped in place.

Next I traced the outline of the images/text by pressing firmly, which transfered the oil pastels on the back side to the surface of the wood like this (I later switched to blue pastels since orange didn't show up well):

After the image was transferred onto the board, I traced the lines with a wood burner which both darkened the line and indented it, resulting in this:

It's hard to see the design in photos, but here are some shots of the finished board installed!