Fresh Flower Market Sign

Heather Olinde
by Heather Olinde
10 Materials
$20
2 Hours
Easy
This summer, I've been trying really hard to work on my green thumb. I've never been great at keeping plants alive and I wanted to change that.

I decided to create a potting table on my patio and start small. I had a vision of how I wanted it to look and that vision included a sign that said "Fresh Flower Market."

I know they make signs that say this, but I'm a budget-friendly DIYer when it comes to things like this. I don't like to spend a lot of money on something that would be fairly easy to make. So that's what I did, and I'm going to show you how to do it as well.
The first thing you will do is cut a piece of 3/4″ plywood to the size of 18″ x 28.” I already had some scrap plywood laying around so I didn't even have to purchase this. You could probably even use 1/2" if that's what you have.I sanded mine a little so it would be easier to paint.
Next, apply 2 coats of white acrylic paint, letting it dry between each coat. I used a medium-sized paint brush for this.


While your paint is drying, you can print out your Fresh Flower Market stencil and get your words ready (click the link to my blog at the bottom of this post to print the free stencil).
A few of the words are too long to fit on one piece of paper, so you will just cut and tape the words together. You can see above how I taped the words Flower and Market together.
Once you have your words printed, you are going to turn the sheets over so the letters are face down and scribble over the letters with a pencil. This will create sort of like a carbon for you to be able to trace the letters on to the wood. It’s the same concept as using carbon paper, but you can’t hardly find carbon paper these days.
Alrighty, by now your paint should be dry so let’s get started. Oh, and let me just say that if you are OCD, a perfectionist, or lack patience this project will probably totally stress you out. Sooooo, you have been warned. Haha. Seriously though, this project is super easy, it’s just a little time consuming and it probably won’t be perfect.


Now you are going to place your words on to the sign and try to center them the best you can. You can use a tape measure if you are OCD, but I just eyed it. I’m going to distress this sign to make it look old so I don’t mind if it’s not perfect.
Once you have it taped down, you are going to trace the perimeter of the letters with a pencil. After you trace all of the words you can pull the paper off and you should be able to see the words on your board. Some areas may be a little light and you can just go over it with your pencil so it’s easier to see the line when you are painting.
Now it’s ready to start painting. Using your black acrylic paint and a small paint brush, start painting your letters. Coloring outside of the lines is accepted. Remember, don’t stress because we will distress. ha. This is the time consuming part. It takes a while to paint inside of all of those letters.
Finally. Done with the letters. Whew. Next, I decided that I wanted to add a boarder. To do this, I used a ruler and drew two lines around the perimeter of my sign, about 0.5 cm between the two lines. Then I placed painters tape above and below the lines. I used a cup to create a rounded edge at each corner (I had the hubs do this while I snapped a pic).
On the rounded parts, you can overlap the tape then use a utility knife to cut away the tape.
Once I had all of the tape in place, I painted the border with the black acrylic paint. I let it dry for a few minutes then I pulled away the tape. As I pulled away the tape, the tape that was covering some of the letters pulled some of the paint off of the letters.


I actually really liked the way that looked so I decided to put tape on all of the letters and pull it off to give them a distressed look. I was going to sand the letters some, but this was much easier and less mess.


I also used a piece of sandpaper to distress the edges and other random areas of the board.
See, I told you that it would be okay if you painted outside of the lines. icon


This is how I styled it above my potting bench. I absolutely love the way that it turned out. And I have to say that I am so proud of the green thumb I am developing. I've had all of these plants for about 2 months now and they are all still alive. Yay me!
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial for the Fresh Flower Market Sign and maybe it inspired you to create your own sign. If you’d like to see the video tutorial of this DIY, you can head over to my  Instagram and click on DIY in my saved stories.
Resources for this project:
See all materials
Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.
Hometalk may collect a small share of sales from the links on this page.More info
Heather Olinde
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
Go
Frequently asked questions
Have a question about this project?
Comments
Join the conversation
2 of 4 comments
Next