Rustic Hand-Painted Sign

How would you like to be able to hand paint you very own rustic sign? You and I have both seen the mass produced signs in every retail store imaginable, but most of them are too country or too primitive or just a little too printed-by-a-machine-look for my taste. So I decided to make my own, and I'm sharing the step by step, so you can do it too.

If you are a project hound like me, I know you've got a scrap wood pile, with tons of too small to use for anything boards and that is what you need to begin. This particular sign is from a 2 X 6, but I've been painting on all kinds of boards, including my favorite fence boards.

Here is a list of supplies:

Scrap Wood

Acrylic Craft Paints:

Burnt Umber, Territorial Beige and Canyon Orange

Small Artist Brush

Sander

Towels

Spray Sealer

First, if your board is super dirty, give it a quick sanding with the palm sander and clean up with a towel.

Using Burnt Umber, base coat the entire piece of wood. Let dry.

Using Canyon Orange, top coat the entire board and let dry. I used the burnt umber as a base coat because we will be sanding later and that is the color that will be revealed, plus it acts as a primer.

Now it's time to start lettering. You can pick any word you would like, I chose Autumn for this sign. Find the center of your board, it is important to start in the middle of the board so you don't letter to big or too small. I just wrote the word out first. You can do cursive or a more whimsical lettering, it's all up to you! Once you get the spacing right, add in details to your lettering. Basically beef-up the word. I used a ruler to really straighten out the lines.

Erase all of the stray pencil marks, and you are ready to paint

Using Burnt Umber again and the Artist brush, start painting in the lettering. I almost always do a second coat for ample coverage.

After you have painted all the letters and let dry, erase the remaining pencil lines that you might have.

Now is the time to add in detailing with shading. Here is a question that I always ask myself: If the sun is shining high in the sky, where would the shadows fall? Just remember this as you add shading to each letter. For the color I used Territorial Beige.

Keep in mind too that this does not have to be perfect. We are aiming for a rustic sign that will be sanded later, don't waste time getting each and every brush stroke perfect. It just doesn't need to be.
See?

Here is the sign completely painted and dry.

Then attack it with the palm sander. I spend about 3-5 minutes sanding using medium grit paper. You can do this as much or as little as you would like, and each piece of wood will sand differently, which I really like.

As the final step, seal the sign with spray sealer and add a hanger to the back. Then you are ready to decorate! I like leaning the sign too, across a mantle would be great

In a milk glass bowl, with bittersweet and gourds
Here is a long one, this would be great over a doorway

I think you could customize anyway you wish, what about your last name? That would be fun! For the Halloween ones, I used Jack-O-Lantern Orange and Ebony Black, and the green is Avocado Dip.

Thanks for stopping by!

I hope you are inspired to paint a rustic sign, I really love the charm it adds for this time of year.