DIY Painted Rustic Beach Welcome Sign

Follow this easy tutorial for this easy DIY painted rustic beach welcome sign – a gorgeous piece of wooden decor for a coastal farmhouse-style beach house!

This DIY painted rustic beach welcome sign is absolutely perfect to greet guests as they’re entering into a home by the water! I made this sign for my sister-in-law and brother-in-law who love their nieces and nephews to pieces. Our daughters are totally spoiled by them – they’re definitely “Fun Aunt Robin & Uncle Pete!”

I knew I wanted to make a sign for their new little beach home they’re building, but I didn’t originally plan to paint the beach/water scene on there. As I started getting out my materials for creating this sign, I started thinking about it and wondered if I could paint a beach scene in the background without totally messing up the sign. Y’all, this was SO EASY! And it turned out even better than I thought it would! If you want to make a sweet sign to welcome folks into your home by the water or perhaps as a gift for someone else, this is such a great option!

Here’s what you need:

Wood planks (the size that you want to make the sign)
Skinnier wood planks to hold the main sign planks together (see image below)
Wood glue
Sandpaper
Wood stain (any kind will do – just pick whichever color you’d like)
Old paintbrush for stain
Old sock for stain
Acrylic paint for beach scene (tans/browns for the sand, white & some blues for the ocean and sky)
Old paint brushes to paint the beach scene
Cardstock for practicing painting the beach scene (optional)
Paper with text on it
White chalk
A fine-tip pen
White paint pen to outline the letters (optional)
White paint for the letters
Skinny paint brush to paint the letters
Electric drill with small drill bit
Two eye hooks
Jute to hang the sign from the hooks
Burlap ribbon, raffia, and seashell for embellishment (optional)

Let’s get started!

I had 3 wood planks – about 18 inches long and 4 inches wide – that I glued together and then glued to these smaller wood planks to make them more secure.

I used some sandpaper (we were out of regular sandpaper, so I had to use a pad for our rotary sander) to lightly sand the edges and make them smooth. I also wanted the corners slightly rounded.

You can use any kind of wood stain on this. I just used what we had because I liked the color and I love that it’s not sticky. It also dries really quickly! I squirted some onto the wood and then spread it out generously with the paintbrush.

Then I used an old sock to even it out. Look how lovely this stain is!

Next, I put my beach scene paint colors on a paper plate and began figuring out how I wanted to paint the beach scene.

I would recommend this – I practiced first with some white cardstock to make sure I knew what process I wanted to follow when painting my beach scene. You can see how I mixed and blended colors to make a more cohesive beach scene rather than have stark differences between the end of one color and the start of another.

Once I was pleased with how I was going to go about painting the beach scene, I began with the sand.

Then I worked my way into the water part.

(You can see how I blended colors to get the right color combos and blends in order to make a more realistic beach scene.)

Then I painted the “way into the distant ocean” water with the darker blue paint.

And then topped it all off with the sky.

Once you let the paint dry, then get out your paper with the letters you want to transfer onto the wood. My sign was bigger than 8.5 x 11″ paper, so I had to print out the text on a few sheets of paper and then tape them together to make the sign.

Chalk the back of the sign with regular white chalk.

Make sure you coat it pretty thick with chalk.

Then re-place the sign with the chalk side face down and begin tracing the letters with a fine-tip pen onto the wood. You’ll want to make sure you press down firmly with the pen in order to get the imprint of the letters on the wood.

You can see in the photo below the outline of the chalk imprint on the wood. Makes it easy to paint the letters!

You don’t have to do this, but I did this to make the letters a little neater – I used a white paint marker to outline the letters before I painted them in with white acrylic paint & a paintbrush.

I did a couple coats of white acrylic paint on the letters.

And here she is! So pretty! I really was so thrilled with how this turned out! And seriously, SO easy! Looks like a piece of art that ANYONE can create! 🙂

Lastly, I screwed in the eye hooks into the top (one on each end of the sign on the top) and then ran jute (rope) through them to create a hanger for the sign.