Signs of Peace and Love

Signs of Peace & Love: Flowers & Butterflies

Signs of Peace and Love

Signs of Peace and Love

The peace sign is a peaceful blue, and the heart is a vibrant red, and from there we have two opinions.

The flower is a sunflower, specifically a woodland sunflower, a motif you may see frequently on this site. The color is golden yellow, but the center is stippled on with copper metallic paint, just to give it a little sparkle and dimension. It could be “Peace, Love & Flowers” or “Peace, Love & Nature” or “Peace, Love & Wildflowers”, and possibly more interpretations, but I’m not sure it needs to be put into words.

The butterfly is a monarch since we’re all trying to save them right now. Butterflies symbolize so many things, and you can fill in the blank for what it symbolizes for you.

Each sign is my design and hand-stenciled and detailed by me from my own art. It’s in acrylic paint on weathered wood reclaimed from a neighbor’s old stockade fence. I create each sign individually and the wood surface varies so each sign is unique. This sign measures 10″ wide x 3.5″ tall and has a sawtooth hanger on the back.

This sign can be hung indoors or out. The weathered wood has already taken a beating and the acrylic paints are colorfast and permanent on the wood.

Peace, Love & Flowers

Peace, Love and Flowers, or Nature, or...

Peace, Love and Flowers, or Nature, or…


Peace, Love & Butterflies

Peace, Love and Flowers, or Nature, or...

Peace, Love and Flowers, or Nature, or…



About the signs

It started when I saw the pile of nice weathered wood from my neighbor’s old stockade fence stacked in his driveway. I knew I could do something with that wood, and though I’m overcrowded with future projects I couldn’t pass it up and stacked it in a dry area under my deck until I could get to a project. Which took about two weeks—I just couldn’t wait.

I like the look of the stenciled wood signs that are popular right now and I’d been planning on making a few. I painted signs years ago, before I bought my house, and before everyone went digital: big sheets of plywood for work sites, window banners, even a few trucks and buildings. I joke that’s how I saved the down payment for my house. And I still love to paint them.

I looked at that pile of weathered wood, just the perfect weight and color for little signs, and that was just what I needed to make it all come together. I didn’t want to buy pre-cut wood in the craft store, I wanted wood that had character. I made a couple of samples to see about cutting and finishing the wood, and creating the stencils and painting the signs, and it fit right into a good spot with time (eh, some, more than some) and cost (practically nothing). I standardized the size so that all my wood was the same and made up my stencils.

Drawing on my experience painting signs I began painting these signs freehand with outlines I traced on the wood, and that worked fine with the first pieces of wood I used that I’d chosen because they were nice and smooth. However, in real life, most of the wood is not smooth but has rough finishes, stamped patterns from being cut, and splits and holes from nails and weather and stenciling helps to control the edges. They are a combination of stenciling large areas and painting in smaller details, plus all hand-lettering.

The wood is 3.5″ wide so the signs aren’t terribly large. I worked out all the designs so they were the same width, 10″, just to make cutting and finishing the wood that much easier. The back of the wood is slightly convex. Each sign has a sawtooth hanger in the middle of the back.

Find more

See more Signs in my Handmade Gift Gallery.

Other items with the same art or design To find all items on this site with the same art or design, use the search box for the name of the artwork and you'll find all that's available.

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