Reduce, Reuse and Recycle: DIY Painted Sign // Guest Post from Deb of Living the Good Life

Firstly, it should be said, ive never done a guest blog before, so thank you to Rachel for letting me and i hope you have a great holiday!!!!

I am an avid believer of Reduce, re-use, recycle this, if theres anything i can use the 3 R’s for i will.  I hate waste so if it can be re-used, it generally is. Also with having children, teaching them early and getting them involved, means that it becomes a way of life for them from the off.

At the moment on my blog http://livingthe-goodlife.blogspot.com/ we as a family are trying run a bit more self sufficiently and its an educational experience for my daughter, who can see that veg comes from the ground and not from the market.  By next year i hope to have a good crop of veg or at least have it planted as well as have chickens  running around the plot so we can have fresh eggs, the blog highlights the highs and lows of this starting from the beginning.

This weekend we have been allocated out allotment i cannot tell you how excited i am about this, i can not wait to get cracking on it and i have so many ideas as to what we are going to do, how it will be set out etc....

So to get into the spirit of our allotment obviously a sign for our plot was a must!!! Even if theres nothing on there the sign can go up and people can see it belong to someone, and using the above mantra ‘reduce, re-use, recycle’ i started hunting around the house to see what could be used.

Upstairs in our bedroom we have a very old, haggered dining table which is currently being used as a clothes horse!! 

 

At this point it worth noting other half of this table has been ‘used’ and painted and been made into a desk for my daughter room, eventually with a bit of luck ill use so much of it for different things there will be nothing left of it and we will no longer justify using it as a clothes horse!

On either side of the table of the centre of the table one of these has been taken off for the ‘sign project’.

 

All the handles and screws have been taken off and it had been sanded down.  Then with the clever use of greaseproof paper and any font you fancy on the computer:

TA-DAAAAAAAAAA.

Now it wouldn’t be ‘me’ if it wasn’t a little bit ‘kooky’ so the bit about the fairies has been added because, lets face it, id love to think there are fairies helping around the garden and secondly, and more importantly, my daughter can not wait to get down to the allotment to look for them, i wonder how long it will be before i can convince her that if she digs up carrots the fairies will be under them!!!!

Finally, a little bit of paint, we’re going for a bit of a mad hatters/alice in wonderland theme.

And there we have it a handmade sign, completely free to go on the allotment.

Pop over to the blog http://livingthe-goodlife.blogspot.com/ and become a follower and keep up with us as we hopefully progress into becoming a tad more self sufficient.  And any tips would be greatly appreciated.