While out garage saling a week or so ago I came across these wooden pigs.

There was a black one and a white one.  I’m guessing that someone made them in shop class.  They aren’t really cutting boards, because they seem to be cut out of simple plywood.

I thought they would make a fun stenciling project, and they were just a couple of dollars, so I snatched them up.

Now, I know that painted signs are no longer trendy and all of the YouTuber ‘decorating experts’ are saying you should get rid of them, but personally I’m still a fan.

I love my Flower Market sign that hangs on the deck.

And I don’t think I’ll ever tire of the ‘sign’ that I made out of an old headboard that hangs on the carriage house.

And then there are the ‘signs’ that I make with old sleds for Christmas time.

I’m still loving those too.

Maybe the thing about these is that they are a little more unique than your basic faux painted sign from Hobby Lobby.

I hope that will be true of my two pig signs as well, but let’s see what you think.

After giving each one a good cleaning and a scuff sanding, I painted them both with Dixie Belle’s Coffee Bean.

I’ve shared this color before calling it the ‘new black’.  It’s a dark black-brown.  I think it reads black until you put it up against a true black, and then you can see the warmer brown undertone.

The Coffee Bean was the final color for the first one, but I then added two coats of Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth to the second one.  After the paint was dry, I sanded them to add back a more distressed look.

Then I pulled out my stencils to see what would fit nicely on the pigs.  This General Store stencil from Wallcutz was perfect.

I did tape off the border because I didn’t think that would work well on the pigs.

Then I started with the Coffee Bean version and added a shadow of the “General Store” wording using Dixie Belle’s Dried Sage.  Once that dried, I moved the stencil up and over by just a hair and stenciled the entire design (minus that border) in Dixie Belle’s Ecru.

Once dry again, I scuff sanded over the entire thing with 220 grit sandpaper and then finished it off with a coat of Dixie Belle’s Big Mama’s Butta.

For the second pig, I just stenciled the design in Coffee Bean without adding a shadow.

In hindsight, I rather wish I hadn’t skipped that shadowing effect.  It really does add a lot of dimension.

Not that this 2nd pig is bad, I just prefer the first one.

How about you, do you have a preference?

Leave a comment and let me know.

And if any of you locals want to ignore those YouTube experts and add another sign to your decor, check out my ‘available for local sale’ page because this pair of pigs is for sale (separately, of course, unless you really want a pair).