Address plaque

So I’ve wanted to make an address plaque for our house for quite awhile. We are at 1511 but often our packages go down the street to an unoccupied house at 1517 - pain in the butt.

After doing some research, I settled on an art nouveau theme I liked and fonts that were legible enough, and made this out of MDF. The wings were cut around the perimeter and engraved in each cell. The dragonfly and letters were glued to an uncut piece of MDF, along with a double-walled “border.” There were then a few rounds of painting with reactive copper metal coating, and spraying with a couple different patinas… and then repainting by hand the “highest points” (aka body of the dragonfly) to bring out the contrast between the patina’ed and un-patina’ed copper. Pretty happy with how it turned out!

A side note: initially I tried to cut out the wing cells but it was just too much, and they burned to a crisp in the process because of how detailed the design is, so I re-did with a deep engrave. It took longer, but the end result is much sturdier.

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Here are some other photos. A closeup of the engraved wings, prior to painting:

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Each of those raised “lines” I had to go over again with copper after the patina had set. That was the most time-consuming part of this whole process. The overall size is basically a full 11"x19"

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This is a fantastic piece. Great job.

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Whoa, this is reminiscent of a project that @ekla did a while back, let’s see if I can find it…got it! Copper House Numbers

Cool to see a different variation, the minds in this community are ripe with creativity!

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I really like the copper patina effect - works really well on your design

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Beautiful!

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Totally worth all your effort!

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The sign is beautiful. Never move, and if you do, take the sign.

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Nice work in the design. I like that the dragon fly is raised on the sign! And the patina looks real. Now maybe your mail will come…

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Wow truly spectacular!

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I like it.

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Beautiful! Would you mind sharing a little more about the type of paint you used? I would love to try to achieve a similar look.

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Oh not at all! SculptNouveau makes the primer, metal coating and patinas I use, and I order them from this place:

My youngest sister is with an historical preservation architecture firm in Los Angeles, and they use these same products (I found that out later after telling her she should check them out).

The manufacturer’s YouTube videos are very informative:

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Thank you so much. Will check it out!

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I absolutely love this your design and sign! Are you willing to share your dragonfly file?

How pretty that looks! I love the way the dragonfly body ends in the letter M…what beautiful work you have done on this!

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Thank you! That is my favorite part of it, honestly. I was so happy to see that little detail reveal itself :slight_smile:

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The dragonfly isn’t mine - I got it from Creative Fabrica :slight_smile:

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Thank you for letting me know. I appreciate that.