I made a sign for the garden, and this is how:

When we fixed the floorboards in the bathroom earlier this year, we had to buy new pieces of wood to replace some of the floor boards. We ended up keeping some of the off-cuts of the new pieces of wood and some of the nicer quality older pieces after my insistence (because I’m a bit of a hoarder but also because I knew I wanted to make a sign for our kitchen garden).

I found a font I thought would look nice and printed out the wording in the size that I wanted it and selected the floorboard that fitted the wording the best. I had to cut it down a bit.

We have lots of left over paint in the shed so I coated the wood with one of the primers we had lurking around and let it dry in the sun.

I had intended to use some leftover green paint which, we’d used to decorate our old flat , to colour the floorboard as it was exactly the same colour as our new front door. However that plan was scuppered when I opened the tin. Never mind, instead I quickly nipped to B&Q and bought a tester pot in a similar colour. One tester was enough for one coat of the plank, it looked fine so I didn’t bother with a second.

Next I used the print out of the text and I drew the outline of the letters on the back of the paper in a bold (7B) pencil and I placed the pages on the wood where I wanted the text to be. With the printed side facing up, I used a HB pencil to draw the outline of the letters  and transfer the graphite from the back of the page onto the wood.

I used a chalk pen to go over the outline of the pencil and enabling me to colour inside the line with some white paint we had left over from the woodwork in the bedroom.

I was quite happy at this stage and should have just left it here but I wanted a bold outline (which I now regret doing).  It did need a bit of a darker outline but I went for the wrong colour as it was the only green chalk pen we have. It’s fine though, I could have gone over it in another colour but I didn’t have anything more suitable.

I coated it in two layers of wood treatment before I put it outside so it’s waterproof and I hung it up yesterday on the wall of the kitchen garden and I was pleased with myself because I even managed to hang it straight.

It spends a lot of it’s time being covered by the nasturtiums above it, becasue they have gone crazy, but that’s a good sign.