Garden Signs

After building our raised garden bed, we had some leftover pieces of fence pickets that we used for the sides.  What to do?  Make some signs for the garden!  For Mother’s day, I made my mom one that says “flower garden.”

I made a simple one for myself that says “garden” in a lighter grey vinyl.

I wouldn’t use fence pickets for anything that you want to have a nice, smooth finish, but it worked great for the rustic look I was going for.  I sanded the boards down a bit to avoid splinters, and applied some coats of of primer and paint.  I sanded the edges again to make it look weathered.  Here’s how it looks in my garden. Look, stuff is actually growing!  Side note: If you are looking for a way to keep the neighborhood cats out of the garden, chicken wire with holes cut in it for the plants works great.

I cut out the letters for the signs with my Silhouette Cameo of course.  It’s seriously my favorite crafting tool!  (By the way, the Silhouette chipboard promo ends today). It can cut any font that you have installed on your computer.  I just discovered the awesomeness of downloading free fonts from dafont.com (I am not affiliated with them in any way).  It’s not just word fonts that you can download either!  They have a lot of “dingbat” fonts with different shapes that you can use to cut on your Silhouette.  The flourishes that I used on these signs were from the font Soft Ornaments Three.  In case you don’t know how to install your downloaded font, I will briefly show you how.  Just do a search for your “fonts” folder.

Open the folder, and just click and drag your new font file (the one with the TT on it) and drop it into your “fonts” folder.  Now you can use the font on any program on your computer!

One last thing, make sure to varnish your signs with an outdoor clear varnish to protect it.  I got mine in a small bottle at the craft store.  A couple coats, and you are good to go!