How to Make a Sign from a 1" x 6" Board

Today I’m going to show you how to make a sign. These mini signs are adorable! They make great gifts, fun home decor to fill in small spaces, and they’re great sellers at craft shows, too. Best of all… they’re quick and easy! Don’t miss the video below where you can actually see the whole process.

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How to Make a Sign – Mini Edition

Supplies needed:

1″ x 6″ board
orbital sander OR sandpaper
chalk paint (leftover from other projects)
varnish
Have Courage and Be Kind Transfer
chalk paste
squeegee
old cake pan (optional)
alcohol wipes (for clean up)

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First, prepare your surface. For this project we used plain 1″ x 6″ boards from our local hardware store. Bikeman cut them into 7″ lengths and sanded them for me.

I wiped them off with a damp cloth to get the last of the sawdust off then painted them with leftover chalk paint. If you want to know exact colors used in these photos: the green is Holy Guacamole from Dixie Belle, white is Everlasting by DecoArt, and the yellow gold is Inheritance also by DecoArt.

We had quite the assembly line going for these mini signs! Bikeman cut two 8′ 1″x6″ boards (I forgot to count how many signs that made.) and sanded them. Then I painted all of them, let them dry (My entire dining room table and kitchen counter was covered in drying boards!), and varnished them.

When they were finally COMPLETELY dry, I stacked them and started the transfer process. If you missed it before, here’s a link to my basic chalk past transfer tutorial.

You can also see how to use the chalk transfer in this video:

And now for the finished product!

This mini sign is the most basic and easiest sign to make. I just used one color of chalk paste — Chalkology Paste, bright white. And that sign literally takes MINUTES to make!

If you want to get a little more creative, you can do each detail in a different color.

This technique does require a little more skill and speed. As you can see from the photo below I wasn’t careful with my colors and had some show up where it shouldn’t have. That didn’t really bother me. I like little “mistakes” like this.