Sign Painting 101: Picking Paint

This week I thought I’d share a little bit about how I paint signs. With a few basic skills, a couple of brushes and the right paint, you can make any little sign your heart desires. First things first: Picking the right paint.
You can paint the base of the sign with any good quality paint – it’s essentially going to become your canvas, so you want something that will be smooth and easy to paint over. I have used every kind of paint imaginable, depending on what I have on hand, what look I’m going for and how big the sign is. A good smooth piece is the goal.

 

So here’s a tip to help to get your paint nice and smooth: When using latex paint, after you completely coat the top layer with paint, take a bowl of water and dip your brush in it, then smooth over the wet paint. Do it enough times to completely cover the wet paint with a thin layer of water. Once you have it all covered, smooth it out and walk away. Yes, walk away. The water acts like a leveling agent to make your paint smooth and streak free. {For all those who have asked – this is how I paint laminate. Sand it really, really well and then paint two layers of paint & primer in one, and use the water trick on top.}

Picking the paint for lettering is a little trickier. You can use whatever you’d like – but I prefer a paint that’s not too thick or not too thin – and DecoArt Designer Series is my very favorite kind. It flows well, covers nicely and even helps to add an aged texture that I adore. When painting big letters, it’s easy to coat a large area at once – but when doing thin, precise ones you get the right control over the paint to make it go where you’d like.

Now that we’ve got the paint all squared away, come back tomorrow and we’ll talk a bit about brushes :)