How to make Farmhouse signs for your kitchen 

Hello friends, there are a lot of ways to make a cute farmhouse sign for your house.  I have been wanting one for my laundry room for a while now. Luckily you I’ve done all the research on how to make these and now all you have to do is decide what kind of sign you would like in your house.  I have a few ways to make these darling farmhouse signs some are harder than others, It’s good to have a few choices to choose from right?  The first sign I wanted to make was for above my french doors in my kitchen so I wanted it to be pretty large.  This is how I made this free pallet wood farmhouse gigantic sign.

Wooden Palet farmhouse sign. 

This is what you need

1. a pallet or maybe fencing wood would work, also barn wood would be amazing if you can get it.
2. hammer and some nails
3. white paint
4. stencil

I am super lucky that I have a hubby who can use power tools,  I have been known to use his saws but its kinda nice too have him do this for me. My hubby found a pallet outside his office and dragged it home for me.  LOL, I know where to find these kinds of things for all the weddings I’ve done.  The pallet in question was the perfect weathered gray I wanted however since it was massively weathered the wood was kinda fragile and it was hard to pull the nails out.  sigh the problems of doing things for free right? 

After my hubby got the pieces of wood out we sawed them down to all the same size. Then made a simple frame to go around the main part of the wood pallet with the smaller pieces of the pallet. Look how cute this turned out!!!

The next step was to paint the sign.  I love the “fresh produce” phrase so I just printed out the words extra large in a word document, using a big blocky font, I’m pretty sure my size was like 175.

I didn’t want to make a stencil so I just ended up rubbing chalk on the back of the words that i just printed out on plain type paper.  Then flipped the printable to the right side with the chalk facing the wood and traced around the words with a mechanical pencil (no lead)  It left a chalk outline of the word.

Then all I had to do was to paint inside the lines.  I used a large brush to fill in the big part of the letters and a smaller one to the touch-ups on the edges,  I just used some old house paint i had in the garage becasue this old wood seemed to suck up a lot of paint and it might take up too much craft paint. LOL  Yup kindergarten came in extra handy!  Done and Done.

The only problem with a pallet sign is that its heavy, I mean its straight wood!  It was too heavy and didn’t quite fit above the doors that I wanted it too.  so I thought maybe the counter?  Nope!  too big so I ended up putting it on top of my cupboards even though I was going to all that stuff down after Christmas and just have nothing up there.  O-Well it’s going to stay up there for a while, I think it looks kinda cute in my unfinished kitchen, haha

Wood framed Canvas farmhouse sign.

the next sign I made was also for my kitchen and was the same kind of idea only instead of wood I had a 10×10 sized canvas that I used.   This is what you need for this smaller canvas farmhouse sign.

1. 10×10 stretched canvas   got mine supper cheap from Amazon
2. black sharpies
3. paint brushes if your using paint but sharpies are the easiest
4. pencil
5. 1×1 wood molding about 2$ at home depot
6. printable of your choice

This little sign is my favorite, it took a little bit of work to get the letters filled in but really it was like one episode of Psych I didn’t even get to binge watch my favorite show!   First, find a saying that you just love!  This one from Ourhandcraftedlife.com was so darling and I knew I just couldn’t free hand it.  I grabbed the printable and used the same technique I used on the wood pallet sign but using the canvas instead of wood.  First I covered the back of the saying in pencil because I was working on a white background this time, but if you wanted to paint the canvas gray or black the chalk would work better than a pencil.  

Then I fliped the printable over and traced around the edges of the words so that it left a faint outline of pencil on the canvas.  I also taped the printable to the canvas so that it wouldn’t slip around while I was tracing.  

It’s almost embarrassing how easy this is, and like most of my projects i think it harder to go get the supplies than actually do the project it self Lol.  Ok, so now that you have traced your saying onto the canvas you will need to grab a few black sharpies to fill in the words.    I made the mistake of thinking this dried fast and kinda smeared some of the sharpie.  so place a piece of paper on your canvas and be careful when you trace your letters.  

I used a thick large sharpie for the main lettering and then used a fine tipped one to do the small lines and fill in the spots that didn’t get covered as well.  Can you see the small spots that needed to be filled in?  and that smear?  I did try to clean it up after but Ill have a better time later when its fully dried.  Seriously the perils of crafting! I’m not going to stress about this because life is too short to worry about such things, and seeing how fast my style changes It might not be around too long anyway, ha ha.   I think it adds to the rustic factor and makes it look original instead of purchased at Hobby Lobby and isn’t that what we whan?  Good old fashion crafting and creating with love right? 

It looks darling hanging behind by white kitchen accessories, and seeing that i hid my stash of goodies in that canister I can see it every time I’m in that corner of my kitchen LOL please don’t tell my kids.  But if you happen to be over at our house and the music is on loud and the kids are home you know there will be great dancing going down in the middle of dinner preparation!  And isn’t that what life’s about?  finding phrases and motoes and reminding yourself what the most important things in life are about?