Last month I decided to make some pallet signs to hang on our mailbox at the end of the driveway. I love pallet signs and I am constantly drawn to them in craft fairs, Pinterest, and so on, but I have never made one myself.  With Jon’s affinity for chickens and our overabundance of eggs, my initial goal was to create an “Eggs for Sale” sign to let the neighbors know that we had farm fresh eggs for sale.

I perused online for ideas and pondered for a few weeks. However, my biggest inspiration came from the farm signs that we see on our way to work every day that a little old man has hanging out front of his house. After I had determined how I planned to make them, I asked Jon about pallets. He usually has some laying around. He did, but said he had a lot of random old wood laying around that was in our old barn that was about the right size that I could use.  I just love the weathered color and texture of these old pieces.

He cut them all to the same length and width. We went with a 3 inch width which is about the size of most pallet boards. Pallet boards generally run around 3 1/2 inches wide.

I only only “needed” two for now, but since we were at it he went ahead and prepared enough for six signs.

During my pondering and research phase of the project, I was overwhelmed by all of the options for letter stencils and at their price! I even went down some rabbit hole reading about these software and stencil maker/cutters that you can just type up the entire word or phrase you want on the computer and viola! That was a too much for this little project. I had no idea people were so serious about their stenciling. Ideally, one sheet per letter would make it easier to stencil all of the words so that I would not have to wait for paint to dry. However, I found those types of stencils too pricey unless I bought some that were made of paper. I was afraid the paper would get damp from paint and would not last very long.  So I ended up getting these Westcott 2-inch Letter Stencils that were several letters to a sheet.

I really like the crisp easy to read lettering of these stencils. They came with upper and lower case, but I only used upper case. They are made of plastic so theoretically you can rinse/wipe them off….if you did it before it dried on there. I did not buy a stencil brush. What’s the point of using re-purposed wood to throw together some cheap signs if I am going to pay a lot for stencils, stencil brush, and paint? We have been painting something inside or outside non-stop since October when we bought the house! I figured I’d use an old paint brush that wasn’t too big. And we have plenty of random leftover paint so I just chose a plain white so that it would stand out on the darker aged wood.

It would have been easier with a stencil brush and I found the roughness of the wood a bit challenging to paint a clean edge on the letters. Yes, I had read about how to achieve this in some pin, but I didn’t have the patience for all of that.  If I needed to use a letter that was not on the edge of the stencil sheet I just put the sign to the side and started on another sign so the paint could dry.

We already have sold baby chicks, but I figured we would market them every way that we could. On the “Chicks” sign you can even see I got a little sloppy with the paint and there are a few smudges. Oh well, I’m sure nobody will notice from the road.

We didn’t have much of a garden this year with the move, but I figured I would make up a few of some of the things we seem to generally have extras of like squash, maters, and cucumbers. By the time I finished the maters and cucumbers sign I had so much paint on me that I was afraid to touch my phone to take a picture. Of course I could have done that later, but I think you get the idea.

Since we do work away from the home, I thought it would be a good idea to have an “Open” sign.

We placed two S hooks in unused holes in the base of our mailbox.  I then measured the distance between the S hooks to know where to place the eye hooks in the signs. Once the signs were all dry, I screwed in two eye hooks at the top of each sign and two open hooks in the bottom of each sign. The thought was to primarily have the “Eggs 4 Sale” sign up at the top all of the time. Any other seasonal items that we have available to sale we would hang out as needed by hooking the top eye hooks of the signs to the lower open hooks of the above sign. And then the “Open” sign would be hung last.  However, we have already gotten slack about hanging the “Open” sign out when we are home.

Now that I have drove down the rode a few times with them hanging on the mailbox I do think 2 1/2 or 3 inch lettering would be better just so they can be read from a little further away.  I love the rustic look to them and they did not cost much at all.  Overall, I am pleased with how they turned out. They are not perfect and that is why I like them so much.