Drillbit Art – How to Do a Bird Design

Yesterday, I wrote about the sanding and priming portion of repainting cabinets. Today, I’m going to show you how to do this:

Making the bird pattern was so much fun I decided it should be a hole post!

Make A Pattern

I started off by taking a picture of the door I wanted to work with, then pasted that picture into a Photoshop File that was set to the exact real size of the door, about 13″ wide x 18″ tall. This allowed me to get a good visual representation of what the finished product would look like and easily adjust scale.

I also have designs in Photoshop for a coffee cup and a flamingo. I think I’ll be doing them both on something else very soon! I really like the way this looks! So, I was then able to print out a hole pattern in the exact size I wanted to do in real life. The pattern really makes this easy!

Simply place the pattern on the door where you want it and tape it down.

Then grab a hammer and a good sharp nail or a screw with a good point.

A single solid strike with the hammer in the center of each dot punches through the paper and creates a nice indent in the wood, clearly marking the pattern. A smallish hammer helps avoid using too much force.

This is what it looks like when all the holes are punched and the pattern is removed:

It looks almost done already!

If the first step is done properly, the part with the drill is much easier, because the point of the drill bit will rest inside the recess created by your punch. I used a small bit, about 1/8″ thick. It’s only necessary to drill about 1/4″ deep to get the desired look.

After all the holes are drilled, I sanded the surface lightly to knock off any little rough edges around the holes, then ran shop vac over the holes to remove any dust inside them. Don’t want that to come out right when the paint is wet.

And that was it! Just prime and paint carefully to avoid filling the holes with paint and you’re all set! (I wasn’t worried about the inside of the holes, but you could paint that with an artists brush if you want to seal the wood completely.) After it was primed, it looked great:

I’m going to include the exact pattern I used for this as a free download in the April Newsletter, coming up in just about a week!

To learn about the painting process, take a look at yesterday’s post:

Painting Kitchen Cabinets Part 1 – Sanding and Priming

So… what do you think? Like it?