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Farmhouse Sign Tutorial
I don’t know about you, but I find myself drooling over all of the large, hand-lettered farmhouse signs that adorn the gorgeous homes on Instagram. I love the idea of words in our home being a reflection of who we are as a family. These signs are gorgeous but oh so expensive.
The problem is, I’m cheap and totally not willing to fork over the $300+ for those farmhouse sign. It’s just not happened.
It’s especially not happening when I can make one myself for less than the cost of plywood, some paint, and a stencil. I will say that I used my Silhouette Cameo for this project.
The Cameo is a bit of an investment but, it is so worth it if you would like a few different signs in your home. The cost of the Cameo and the rest of these supplies is still less than the cost of a single sign. So, if you do end up making just 2 signs, then the investment will be well worth it, and you can do so much more with the Cameo, I could go on and on!
I fell in love with this verse for my farmhouse sign.
I just find it so moving and empowering!
You will need-
Plywood or pine board- cut to the desired size
Transfer Tape
Mustard Chalk Paint
Painting Sponges
Get your plywood
I had a leftover piece of plywood from another project. The dimension of mine ended up at 16″x25″ and that worked perfectly for my sign!
If you don’t have an extra piece laying around, just head down to the hardware store and pick one up!
You will want at least 1/2″ thick piece. I know that you can get smaller sheets of plywood but I always go with the full 4’x8′.
The smaller pieces actually cost more and you can always make more signs with the extra wood for the large sheet.
So next you need to cut the sheet down to the size you want for your sign. A circular saw or table saw are the easiest for this, or you can even ask the hardware store to cut it for you!
The plywood will be relatively smooth already, but I always go over them just a bit with my orbital sander to take off any splinters from cutting and just to soften the edges.
Paint the board
You’ll want to paint the board the background color.
Since we will be painting n the letters choose the color that you want for the background of the sign.
I chose just a bright white that I had left over from some other projects.
Resize and Cut
I opened the Silhouette Studio software on my computer, then opened the design in the software.
If you need to know more about opening an SVG file and how you can do that check out this post.
Once you have your cut file, you can size the verse to fit your board.
You may need to ungroup the design and cut out one line at a time if you are making a very large sign.
Even though my board was 16″ wide I sized my verse at 12″ so I only had to do one cut.
You can use just about any type of vinyl or contact paper as long as it had an adhesive backing, to cut the stencil.
I have tried most of them and I used to try and go the ultra-cheap route with contact paper. It can be done but I had a terrible time with it ending up having to cut multiple attempts to get the stencil right.
Expressions Vinyl is the best place to find ORAMASK and Transfer Tape and I order all of my vinyl from them.
Now I have found ORAMASK and it is a film that is made especially for making stencils. And it is cheaper than any type of regular vinyl.
Now that I found this I will never go back to anything else for my stencils.
Load you stencil material into the Cameo by aligning and pressing LOAD MEDIA.
I always do a test cut just to make sure I don’t need to change any settings.
Weeding
Now you can get to weeding your stencil. This just means that you remove the parts of the contact paper or stencil film that you’re not going to use.
You can use a Silhouette Pick Me Up or Exacto knife.
Transfer to Wood
Place your transfer tape over your stencil film once it is completely weeded.
Go over it with a credit card or something to get it to adhere to the tape. Then peel off the film backing.
You can see that I cut my stencil just to space it out on my plywood a bit more.
I was still able to cut it all as one through which is always nice.
Slowly peel off the transfer tape at a 45-degree angle.
If any part of the film starts to come up off the wood sign with the transfer tape, firmly run over that part of the film with a squeegee or old credit card and peel back the transfer tape again.
Press the stencil film down just to make sure that it seals to the wood.
If you are worried about any paint seeping under the stencil then you can do a coat of mod podge before you begin to paint.
With the ORAMASK I don’t get hardly any bleeding and if so I usually leave it and just call it rustic.
PAINT!
I chose a mustard colored chalk paint for the middle lettering. I use a tintable base calk paint that I had tinted to the mustard color at the hardware store.
One great tip is to use a cut up tile sponges for all my painting. I used to go through so many of those foam brushed and they never hardly lasted through a sign project.
We had some large sponges left over from a tiling project that I have cut into different sized chunks and it works great. Easy to use and clean to reuse.
For all the other lettering I used a Charcoal Chalk Paint, both paints are by Rustoleum.
Usually, I do one or two coat of the lettering color depending on what color the background color it.
Remember it doesn’t have to be perfect!
When the paint is mostly dry, usually just a few minutes you can peel the stencil off.
Oramask rips which can be great because then you can work with pulling off smaller sections.
After all the stencil is off I usually let it set for a day before I wax it to seal it.
Depending on the final destination of the farmhouse sign you don’t have to seal it at all if you don’t want to. If I am giving them as gifts I wax them but if they are just for around my house I usually don’t.
Now you have a beautiful farmhouse sign to hang in your home or give as an amazing gift.
What have you created lately?
You can download your free Farmhouse Sign Cut File with of this verse here.
