How to Make Painted Farmhouse Signs the Easy Way
Ready for some easy DIY farmhouse LOVE? We know you all love Fixer Upper and Joanna and farmhouse as much as we do, so we teamed up with Canon and the awesome Lauren from Bless’er House to create some painted farmhouse signs (and don’t worry, we’ll hook you up with the free printable templates, too!)
All it takes is some wood, a bit of paint, and a printer (like our great Canon PIXMA MG7720 printer), and you can pretty much make any kind of farmhouse sign you’d like cheaply and easily.
Painted Farmhouse Signs
Lauren made several signs for her home to show off this easy as pie printed-to-painted rustic sign technique, so we’ll turn it over to her to give you the how-to.
How to Make a Painted Farmhouse Sign (the easy way!)
We were blessed with this pile of reclaimed wood from my husband’s parents that they dug out of their barn. Maybe some would call it gross, but I call it gorgeous!
We gave it all a deep deep cleaning though, so they were ready for a new life as signs.
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Watch the Tutorial first, then you can glance through each individual step.
Painted Farmhouse Signs Supplies used:
- Wood plank (size of your choice)
- Paint
- Paint brush
- Computer printer (we recommend the Canon PIXMA MG7720 printer)
- Cardstock paper
- Templates: you can use mine (below) or create your own
- Utility knife
- Painter’s tape
- Mouse sander
- Coarse or medium grit sanding pads
- Hanging kit (we used one like this)
Free Printable Farmhouse Sign Templates
Subscribers: Get Lauren’s templates for the farmer’s market sign and welcome sign! Just sign up below and they’ll be delivered to your inbox.
*All Remodelaholic printables are for personal, non-commercial use only. Use
DIY Wood Farmhouse Sign Step-By-Step
You can choose to leave your wood raw, but for our large kitchen sign, I decided a crisp white would be pretty in our space. So I gave my entire 1″x12″x8′ plank a base coat of paint.
To create the letters, I made my own stencils by printing the letters I needed on cardstock.
*Ink Saving Tip!!
Since the letters will be cut out, simple use the plain paper setting in draft mode to save a bit on ink. The outline of the letters will still be nice and crisp!
You can just use Microsoft Word or Picmonkey.com to design your words or letters on a page to print, or if you want a sign just like mine, get the templates here for the farmers market and welcome signs.
*All Remodelaholic printables are for personal, non-commercial use only. Use
If you want to make similar signs: For the welcome sign, I used the font Playball. And for the farmers market sign, I used League Gothic. For the date sign, I used Montserrat.
Then, I used a utility knife to cut out my letters to create the stencil (I like having a piece of cardboard underneath to protect my table as I cut). If you planned on using your stencil more than once, you could laminate your cardstock pages before cutting to get multiple uses out of them.
I positioned the stencils where I wanted on my wood plank and taped them down with painter’s tape to keep them steady while I painted on the letters in black.
The best way I’ve found to get crisp letters without a lot of bleeding under the stencils is by pouncing my brush rather than sweeping it back and forth.
As soon as you’ve painted the letters, you can remove the stencils.
When the paint is completely dry, turn on your mouse sander and start distressing. You can choose to distress a little or a lot depending on your style. The more distressing you want, the more coarse your sandpaper should be.
I focused on roughing up the edges and corners of the sign as well.
Once I attached my hanging kit, my husband and I hoisted it up on our kitchen wall. (We hung it using a french cleat style hanger, like this.) Best of all, this project for us was completely free! Gotta love using recycled and leftover project materials.
It really does seem like it was made for the awkward space above our cabinets. Oh wait… it was! Ha!
(You can see all the details about our kitchen makeover here if the rest catches your eye.)
I’ve ended up enjoying making these signs so much that I dove back into our wood pile and made two more using stenciling techniques from printed paper.
I added a sign with our daughter’s birthdate to our living room gallery wall (that I swear is finished now).
And our front porch wreath got a little greeting added to it.
I love how you can put them just about anywhere.
You can see a full demonstration of how I made the two little signs in this video too — please give it a thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe to the Remodelaholic channel on YouTube!
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Didn’t Lauren do an amazing job? This is my new favorite way to decorate above kitchen cabinets!
We are so happy to be working with Canon this year to bring you all some easy do at home printer projects to make your home beautiful or your life a little bit easier and happier. Please help us share the word about these fabulous projects by sharing on Pinterest or Facebook! And check out the Canon PIXMA MG7720, it is a beautiful and USEFUL addition to any office or craft room.
See more of our Canon projects plus all of our free printables HERE
free printable flower garland set
printable gift tags for birthday and just because
free printable hand-drawn feathers
printable poster: but first, kisses
Hi y'all! I'm Lauren from Bless'erHouse. I'm a builder grade subdivision house owner who dreams up outside-of-the-box ways to create a rustic industrial cottage on a budget. Between chasing my toddler and sweet talking my hubby into helping me with yet another project, you can usually find me with a paint brush in one hand and a big ol' glass of sweet tea in the other.
I see some sign making in my future! There is nothing better than a “free” project 🙂
Right?! Free is the best kind. 😉 Hope yours turn out well!
How do you make the stencil word a larger size? And do you measure your board to determine the size of your word…? I am not handy at all with a computer…but would really like to make my own stencils…Thank u
I really like the tutorial…and will show you the signs I make….This is the first sign tutorial that I really think I can do..myself..I am so excited!!
Hi, Peggy. You can actually design your own stencils on Microsoft Word or on Picmonkey.com. That’s how I did these. Just type whatever you’d like in text, choose your font, and adjust the sizes. Print and you’re done. I’m not super computer savvy either, but that method is the easiest I’ve found. Hope yours turns out well!
Love these signs! Can you tell me what kind of white paint you used to paint the Welcome onto the wood sign? It seems like it has great coverage. The white paint I have tried on signs requires tons of coats so I’m looking for something better. Thank you!
Absolutely! I used Fusion Mineral Paint in the color Casement. Most of the time with that paint, I only need 1 or 2 coats max.
Where do you purchase this paint? I have not been able to find it. Thanks, Susam
Looks incredibly easy — thanks for a great tutorial!
Love this tutorial….I was just wondering if it might be helpful to use a spray adhesive on the back of the letters to lightly stick it to the wood and help with crisp letters.
Just a thought.
I’ll definitely try both!
Thanks for the tutorial! Love the kitchen backsplash, do you remember where it’s from?
I love the tutorial. I will make a sign with my anniversary date on it.
So fun! Send us pictures when you’re done <3
Thanks for this tutorial. I am a sucker for signs.
Me, too! Thanks for stopping by!
What type of paint is best for these types of projects on wood? I am clueless. 🙂
Just about any type of paint will work. Chalky paint is great and durable and gives a nice farmhouse-y look, but acrylic and latex paint work, too.
I’d like to know how you cleaned your wood up.
I actually print out the words that I want Color the back of the paper with a pencil and then trace on wood the pencil goes on the wood and then paint:}
Love the Farmers Market sign! Do you remember what size font you used? Thank you!
Hi Mary,
Not sure on the exact size, but you could download the template in the post and compare from there.
I have made my own stencils both with the es cut out method and also with my Cricut I recently tried the tracing method using transfer paper and paint pens. I think that is my favorite so far. I got a couple of them from Walmart and from Michael’s. There are great color choices as well as point sizes from fine to fat.
Any suggestions on how to make a dark background with white letterings?
Love the idea but want the reverse colors!
In love with that farmers market sign! Definitely saving this to my future home decor Pinterest board! Thanks for sharing!
Great sign! I copied your instructions and made one that looks similar!! (After resanding it once because it did NOT look like yours lol!). Question: Do you seal these with anything? I noticed in transporting one that they mark up easily. Curious if you would seal such a sign? Thanks!
We didn’t, but you sure could! I would just watch the gloss on the sealer, since that will take away from the rustic farmhouse look to have a thick gloss on it. So I’d use a matte sealer to maintain the look a bit more.
Got it! Makes sense, thank you for the reply!
wow awesome idea looking forward to trying thanks