WOOF dog lead holder

My friend and I are doggy people as it were! Between us we have 5 dogs, 3 of which do dog agility. The only reason the other 2 don't do it, is because one is too old and the other is too young at just 6 months old. Soon there is to be a new kid on the block too, so we'll be up to 6 dogs between us then - nice even number!

Anyway, point is, we have lots (and I mean LOTS!) of dog leads - different colours, different styles etc. We always seem to be able to justify why we need another one! We guess there's worse things to spend our money on and get addicted to! So we needed somewhere to hang said overflow of leads! We came across this 'self-assembly style' of laser cut bone shape and lettering. You could pick any wording up to 5 letters long. We went with WOOF coz it was a general word - as opposed to a dogs name or anything.

They arrived really quickly and we set about transforming them. We used acrylic white paint all over and drew the paw prints on it with a brown permanent marker pen and a paw print stencil (which we made using a paw print punched out of vellum).

We used all-purpose glue to stick the lettering on with. Attaching the dowel pegs was a little tricky. They were meant to just fit in the recessed holes and be screwed in from the back. Although this worked, the pegs were still a little too wobbly for our liking! Aryldite glue, longer screws and some washers later - sorted! All that remained then was to give it a good coat of varnish. As these are for indoor use, I thought I'd use my quick drying varnish - mainly because it doesn't have a yellow tint (like the old polyurethane varnish). But unfortunately, when applied it just seemed to make the marker pen paw prints...not so permanent! So we quickly gave up on that varnish. This one has been done with a gloss polyurethane varnish. 

Next stage is mounting it on the wall! I have to leave that part of it and ask for help. Last time I tried to drill into the wall, it was like someone had taken to the wall with a semi-automatic rifle!