Today I’m excited to share the new farmhouse sign I just finished making! I’ve wanted one to put on top of our mantle for a while now, but I wasn’t sure what it should say. With St. Patrick’s Day coming up, I saw the saying “This home is built on Love and Shenanigans” and knew that would make the perfect sign for our house!
I added the cute shamrock banner I made from scrap fabric and felt and love how much it adds to the sign. Since the shamrocks are just held on with mini clothespins, my plan is to switch out the shamrocks for something different, depending on the season or holiday. How fun is that?! I love making banners so this is perfect! I took some pictures with different banners I had to see how it would look. I even tried hanging Christmas cards from the twine and it worked great! I’ll definitely be making more things to hang on this sign throughout the year!
Whether you make your own farmhouse sign or buy one, you could easily add the twine to create an attached banner. I actually just taped the twine to the back of the sign so that I can easily let it out or pull it taught depending on what I am hanging. Since the sign leans against our mantle, you can’t see the tape!
I created the sign using my Cricut Explore and Cricut Stencil Vinyl. I decided to paint the words onto the sign rather than using vinyl to give it a more distressed and rustic look. Below you can check out how I made the sign and also see how to make the shamrock banner and grab the free template.
Supplies Needed for DIY Farmhouse Sign with Banner – Links located at the end of this post under “Supplies Needed”
For the Sign:
- Wooden board – I used two boards from Michael’s Craft store glued together
- Cricut Stencil Vinyl
- Cricut Vinyl Transfer Tape
- White paint
- Sponge pouncer
- Cricut Extra Long Mat – 12″ x 24″
- Ruler, tape, Cricut weeding tools
For the Banner:
- Free template – located in blue at the end of this post
- Stiff green felt – sold as 9″ x 12″ sheets from Joanns
- Scraps of green fabric
- Green embroidery floss
- Twine
- Mini clothespins
Step One: Purchase your board and then create your design to fit it. I found two wooden boards at Michaels and glued them together with Elmer’s Wood Glue. Next, I created the design for my sign in Photoshop and saved it as an SVG cut file to use in Cricut Design Space. I used the fonts Alice and Arabella. You could also create your sign from the start in Cricut Design Space. I made sure the width of my wording was less than 24″ so it would fit on an extra long cutting mat.
Cut the design out using your Cricut machine and Stencil Vinyl. Make sure to smooth your vinyl onto the mat before cutting and change your settings to vinyl on your machine. I needed to cut my words out in two sections. The “This home is built on” was one cut, and “Love and Shenanigans” was a second cut. The extra long cutting mat worked perfectly.
Step Two: Prepare the sign for painting. Once the two mats were cut, I weeded the design. Since I was making a stencil, I removed all of the letters and left the background. I used Cricut Vinyl Transfer Tape to transfer the design to the board. This part took me the longest since I needed to measure and make sure my words would be centered and straight. Leave room at the bottom of the sign for the banner. My design ended 9″ above the bottom of my board (except for the “g” hanging down lower). I used scotch tape to help mark the sign and then made sure to remove it as soon as I could so it didn’t leave any marks. Press and smooth the stencil down to make sure paint won’t seep underneath.
Step Three: Once the stencil was applied I was ready to paint! I used a sponge pouncer to apply the paint. This worked better than a paintbrush because it applied the paint in a vertical motion which meant less paint seeped under the stencil. I purposefully applied the paint unevenly to give the sign a more worn look. To do this, just use more paint in places and less paint in others. When the paint is dried, remove the Transfer Tape and the sign is finished!
Creating the Shamrock banner:
Step One: Print the shamrock template and cut it out to create a pattern. Use the pattern to cut out five shamrocks from stiff green felt and five shamrocks from green printed fabric. I used scraps of fabric from my stash and a few leftover fabrics from my St. Patrick’s Day Wreath.
Step Two: Use embroidery floss to handstitch one fabric shamrock to one felt shamrock. I used a tiny running stitch around the edges.
Step Three: Attach a length of twine to the sign. I taped my twine on the back of the sign so that it would be easy to let it out or make it more taut depending on what I was hanging. When I tried hanging the large jack-o-lanterns and holiday cards, I needed the twine to be more taut to support the weight of those items.
Use tiny clothespins to attach the shamrocks and you are finished!! Below you can see the different banners I tried out on the sign. You can find tutorials on my blog for making the jack-o-lanterns, watermelons, and Easter eggs – coming soon! (I’ll update this when the post is live!).
I love the sign and I know I’ll have a lot of fun playing around with the banner each month. You can hang so many different things from the clothespins. Whether you make a handmade banner like this shamrock one or hang up cutout pieces of paper or greeting cards, it will be a fun and unique way to decorate your farmhouse sign!
Shamrock-Pattern.pdf - 128 KB
This post includes affiliate links under the “Shop the supplies I used”. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission, at no extra cost to you! Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers.
