Crafting the Official Chloe's Cantina & Courtyard Sign

23 Oct, 2024

The official Chloe's Cantina & Courtyard sign is officially up!

This was a summer project I did that I'm finally getting around to posting about now since I just put it up today.

In this post, I'll share how I made it:

It started with an idea and a sketch.

Because every fine dining establishment sign needs a visual representation, I drew BJ and Twitch – our first-ever Cantina customers – to represent the Cantina. And a sunflower – one of my favorite flowers and one I proudly grew from seed earlier this year – to represent the Courtyard.

For an accurate design, I traced my pictures of them.

To fit the long title of my bird brasserie de luxe and plant community, I went with a circle sign design to fit all the letters in a smaller space. I got stencils in a typography I liked for the sign and mapped out how it would fit.

With a plan in place, it was time to measure and draw on the plywood.

Then I cut it out with a jigsaw. My dad helped me get the cut of the curve started.

After sanding the edges smooth, I applied a layer of wood finish.

The wood finish smelled so toxic. I applied another layer but then said to myself, I need to look for a new, non-toxic one.

I found one on Amazon from a brand called Furniture Clinic, and after testing some pieces to see how the color looked, I applied another layer of the non-toxic finish. There is something enjoyable about the process of staining wood (with non-toxic materials).

I really like the color of the finish. At this point, it was starting to look like a polished piece. I also painted the sides brown with outdoor acrylic paint.

Then came the time to paint the initial design onto the sign. To do this, I traced each "piece" of my design (BJ and Twitch and the sunflower) onto separate pieces of paper, then cut the shapes out to create a stencil.

I painted them in layers, starting with the sunflower.

Then BJ.

(While he watched me paint.)

A little more blue.

Then Twitch.

After some finishing touches, this phase was complete!

The final step was stencil-painting the letters.

I cut out a paper circle to indicate where to place the bottom of each stencil. Because I planned out the spacing on paper, it was just a matter of painting one letter in front of the other.