The Final Product. Go ‘Neers!

A HUGE thanks to Brian Pickens of Made in West Virginia, who created the Mountain Momma design. Find out more about his work Here!

Here’s how I did it:

So I got a sweet cornhole set from Victory Tailgate over the summer. I originally planned to build the boards myself, but did not have the tools to do so. I highly recommend Victory, their boards are ridiculously durable… Can you tell I go to West Virginia? We got bored pretty quickly with the plain wooden set. So I went to the drawing board I wanted this cornhole set to stand apart from all of the rest. No tacky paint. No boring lines. I wanted something that embodied the state of West Virginia and WVU, with a crisp professional look. Based off of Oregon University’s basketball court, the cornhole set design is meant to have multiple layers, and draw the viewer into the center. Don’t be fooled, the wood you see in this picture is the surface of the cornhole board. At the bottom of the board, the “West Virginia – Mountain Momma” is a reference to John Denver’s “Country Roads”, the unofficial state anthem of West Virginia. A HUGE thanks to Brian Pickens of Made in West Virginia, who created the Mountain Momma design. First thing first, we applied a gold oak stain to the very white poplar wood. Putting a big emphasis on the wood of this cornhole set, we needed to stain both sides, visible and nonvisible, for a full effect. The gold oak stain really brought through the wood grain in the boards! Secondly, I applied several coats of polyurethane to protect the stain and wood, and help bring out some shine on the boards It was very, very shiny. Meanwhile, I ordered custom cornhole bags from Amazon. I got premium bags, built durable to last, and filled with real corn (which is key to slicking the surface of the boards for play). You could also buy the materials and stitch them yourself, but was a great deal for less work. It looked great already! At this point I questioned if I even wanted to continue with the design. Cornhole requires beer. The best beer in Milwaukee, in fact. Instead of painting the design on (which would have been impossible), I ordered custom printed decals. This would ensure the design looked crisp and professional. These decals specifically are meant to be put on floors, so they are extremely durable. After applying the decal, it came out great! The gray center of the decals wood need to be stenciled out. We want to see the sweet wood grain underneath! This was painstakingly tedious, but infinitely less work than painting Semi-Final Product. I later coated the boards with a polycrylic gloss to smooth the board and protect the decal. The entire process took about three weeks of work. The Final Product. Go ‘Neers!