How to make these awesome Star Wars pegboards

My husband belongs to a Star Wars costuming group called the 501st, and I’m working on a costume so I can join, too. After going to an armor party (where a bunch of people get together to hang out, chat, and work on costumes together) at the home of another 501st member with a decked-out Star Wars-themed garage, I decided that for my husband’s birthday I’d give him a little Star Wars flair for our own garage.

Since we have been talking about needing to organize our garage pretty much since day one, it made sense to combine Star Wars into our plans. And thus, the idea for the pegboards was born.

Here’s how you can make one too…

Materials:

• Pegboard
• Paints
• Pencil
• String
• Paper
• Scissors
• Ruler and/or tape measure (I found it helpful to have both)
• Optional: Paint pen, protective clear coat, computer, printer, a glove or cloth (leaning your off-hand on pegboard gets really uncomfortable after a while), clean dry rag for dusting as you go

Step 1: Get pegboard and get it cut to the size you need. They did this for me at the store which meant I could actually fit it into my tiny car (a 4’x8′ sheet most certainly would not fit).

Step 2: Paint the background color. I used two coats.

Step 3: On the picture you’re going to use, lightly draw a grid in pencil. On mine I started with four boxes by four boxes, and later on I hand-sketched more sub-boxes when I needed a little more detail.

Step 4: On your pegboard, measure out a matching grid (so if your picture has four boxes by four boxes, your pegboard should also have four boxes by four boxes.)

Step 5: If you haven’t already figured out where the center of your pegboard is, find it now and mark it with an x.

Step 6: Tie string to your pencil. I just did one loop and one or two knots so it would be secure, nothing fancy. For stability I tied it right before the wood tapered down to the graphite.

Step 7: Figure out where the outer edge of the circle should be and put the pencil down, then stretch the string between there and the center of your pegboard, holding down the other end of the string with your finger or thumb. Now you can move the pencil around in an arc to sketch part of the circle. I had to move around and repeat this step to get the whole circle. Sometimes Most of the time my arcs didn’t line up perfectly. I’d redo them and got a good circle in the end. Remember, this is in pencil! You can erase if your other wrong lines are throwing you off. I got smudges when I erased but we’ll be touching up the paint later.

Step 7b: In hindsight, I should have drawn four concentric circles at this point for the Imperial symbol. It would’ve made my life easier later on.

Rebel logo:

Step 8: Figure out where the lines on your picture overlap the lines of your grid and mark dots on the corresponding point on your peg board. Then connect the dots. If your image has a straight line, you can use a ruler. If it has a slightly curved line and you don’t trust yourself to do it right, you can still connect them with a straight line done very lightly in pencil then use that line as a guide to do your slightly curved line. Having the outer circle already drawn helped. Again, remember this is in pencil. If something looks off, you can erase it.

Step 9: Once you feel that your lines are good, you can go over it another couple times free hand for visibility.

Imperial logo:

Step 8: Figure out how big the grid squares on your pegboard are. Mine turned out to be 8″x8″. I admit this was not planned but it was very handy.

Step 9: After trying the method detailed above for the rebel logo and getting frustrated that the angles weren’t turning out right, at my husband’s suggestion I went back to the computer and recreated the grid on the image then expanded an individual square in Word and printed it out on a regular piece of paper. I did this twice, once for the center, once for the outer section. After a little cutting, I had a handy template in the correct scale.

Step 10: Position your template and tape it down, then sketch an outline. Move and flip your template as needed to get all the sections you need. Again, I had at least one instance of the lines not matching up so I erased the half I had just done and redid it at the correct angle.

Step 11: Stand back and make sure you got everything. I didn’t go over my pencil lines a second time because I felt they were visible enough and, frankly, there were a lot more lines on this one and I’m lazy.

Step 12: Break out the paint! I was able to do the Rebel logo with a 2″ brush but I’ll admit the tips were a pain in the arse. I also got a 1″ sponge brush for the Imperial logo since it was a little more intricate. You may want to use different brushes than I did.

I used the slow-and-steady painting method that I saw on Young House Love. Slow and steady is definitely the name of the game. As for how much paint, I used a leftover sample pot I had in the garage and still had plenty left in the pot after two coats.

Step 13: (Optional) If your edges need touching up (mine certainly did) go back with the background color, again using the slow-and-steady Young House Love method. You can also use a paint pen to outline your design but I recommend doing this after touching up. Another option: add a clear coat to protect the beautifulness you’ve just made.

Step 14: Stand back and admire your awesomeness.