Stencilled wooden signs are one of the most reliable sellers on a craft stall. They cost a few pounds to make, they photograph well, people buy them as gifts, and — crucially — you can personalise them on the spot, which is what turns a browser into a buyer.
This is how to make them properly, what they actually cost, what to charge, and the licensing bit that most people making things to sell get wrong.
What you need, and what it costs
Working in round numbers for a batch of ten signs, which is a sensible first run:
| Item | Cost for ten signs | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Pine or reclaimed board | £12–20 | Offcuts from a timber merchant are often cheapest, sometimes free |
| Sandpaper | £3 | 120 grit then 180 grit |
| Chalk paint (base) | £8 | One tester pot covers several signs |
| Stencil paint | £8 | A contrasting colour, tester pot again |
| Matt varnish or wax | £8 | Essential if they might go outdoors |
| Stencils | Free | Printed from here; laminate them to survive the batch |
| Total | £40–47 | Roughly £4–5 a sign |
At a typical craft fair price of £15–25 for a small personalised sign, that is a healthy margin — the constraint is your time, not your materials.
Preparing the board
The finish quality is what separates a sign that sells from one that looks homemade in the wrong way, and almost all of it happens before any paint.
- Cut to a proportion that looks right. Roughly 2:1 or 3:1 for a word, square-ish for a monogram. Odd sizes look accidental.
- Sand properly — twice. 120 grit to flatten, then 180 to smooth, and always along the grain. Round the edges and corners slightly; sharp corners look unfinished and chip in transit.
- Seal knots in pine with a dab of knotting solution or shellac, or resin will bleed through your paint in a few weeks and ruin the piece after it has sold. This is the one people skip and regret.
- Base coat. One or two thin coats of chalk paint, sanding lightly between. Chalk paint is forgiving on wood and gives the matt finish that suits this style.
The detail that sells: lightly sand the edges after the base coat so a little bare wood shows through. That small distressed edge reads as handmade and considered, and it costs thirty seconds a sign.
What I'd actually buy to start making signs
The genuinely useful kit, and where not to spend.
Realistic outlay to start: £35–45. Everything except the blades and paint lasts for years, so batch two onwards costs you almost nothing but materials.
Some links here are Amazon affiliate links — if you buy through one I get a small commission at no extra cost to you. I have only listed things I would actually tell a friend to buy, and I have been honest below about where cheap is fine.
Stencilling the lettering
Lettering is unforgiving — one crooked letter and everyone sees it. Three habits handle it, and they are covered in full in the lettering guide:
Give every letter the same baseline. Run a strip of low-tack tape along a level line and sit each letter stencil on that edge. Never eyeball it — eyes drift downhill to the right and you will not see it until it dries.
Space by eye, not by ruler. Equal measured gaps look wrong because letters have different shapes. Lay the whole word out dry, stand back, adjust until the gaps look even, then mark positions in pencil.
Work from the middle out. Find the centre of the board, place the middle letter there, then add letters alternately left and right. Starting from the left is how words end up crammed against one edge.
Paint with a nearly dry brush, dabbing straight down. Long letter edges are exactly where bleed shows worst — the guide to stopping bleed is worth reading before a batch rather than after.
Finishing
Let the paint cure properly — overnight, not an hour. Then two thin coats of matt polyacrylic varnish, or a clear furniture wax buffed back if you want a softer look. Varnish is the better choice for anything that might hang in a kitchen, bathroom or porch.
Add a sawtooth hanger or a length of jute twine on the back. A sign that arrives ready to hang is worth a couple of pounds more than one the customer has to sort out themselves, and it takes seconds.
What sells at a craft fair
From what consistently moves on stalls: house names and numbers, family surnames ("The Robinsons"), short sentiment phrases (Home, Gather, Welcome), pet names with a paw or breed silhouette, and seasonal pieces in the run-up to Christmas.
Bring blanks. The highest-value thing you can offer at a fair is personalisation while they wait — take the name, stencil it there and then, and let them collect it in twenty minutes. It also keeps people circulating back to your stall.
Pricing without underselling yourself
The commonest mistake at a first fair is pricing on materials alone. Materials are the smallest part of what you are selling.
A workable formula: (materials × 2) + (hours × your hourly rate) = trade price, and roughly double that for retail if you ever wholesale. For a sign costing £4.50 in materials and taking forty minutes, £18–22 is fair and sits comfortably against what similar stalls charge.
Do not price at £8 because it feels safer. Underpricing signals low quality, exhausts you, and makes it very hard to raise prices later with returning customers.
The licensing bit — read this before you sell anything. Every stencil on this site is free for personal use, but selling items made with the designs needs a commercial licence. Ours start at £6 for a single design, or £39 for the whole library, one-off and permanent with no royalties. Full details on the licence page. This applies to any free design you find anywhere, not just ours — always check before you build a stall around someone else's artwork.
A realistic first batch
Ten signs, three designs, two colourways. That is enough to look like a considered range on a table without committing a weekend to stock that might not sell. Note what people pick up and what they walk past — the second batch should be mostly what sold, and you will know within one fair.
Take a card reader. Cash-only stalls lose sales, particularly on anything above a tenner.