Clover Signs Blog

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If your looking for a special sign as a gift, or for a property of your own, visit us at Clover Signs and we’ll be glad to help.

Possibly the most humorous sign we have made, “The Dead Ostrich” is to hang in a private study, (not on a pub).  The background depicts a pub building on a hill top in the Karoo region of South Africa, hense the Afrikaans translation on the reverse of the sign. It was given as a 70th birthday present to a much loved uncle, and  I trust he is enjoying it on his wall as much as we enjoyed designing and crafting it.

The Dead Ostrich

Throughout the course of the year, we here at Clover Signs can’t help but notice the tendency of people to request a house sign design that is in keeping with that particular time of year. For instance, many crocuses and daffodils are requested in Spring, and we seem to paint a lot of blackberries and apples in the Autumn and poppies in November. This seems quite logical except when you stop to think that your house sign will be up year round. Nevertheless, we are still receiving orders for and making numerous Holly House signs like this one.

Holly Cottage

Tempted? It’s not too late for that last minute Christmas present. However, orders must be placed by the 10th of December in order to deliver by Christmas. Just remember, a house sign will last many years and will be on your house throughout all the seasons, so don’t limit yourself to the present moment.

Traditionally, a house sign maker, Clover Signs has recently branched out into making School Signs. One such sign we did completely gratis for a primary school in Rwanda. An acquaintance of mine and his wife had travelled there earlier this year and had seen the school under construction. The school is now completed, and, with the help of Oxfam, they have received their new sign from Clover Signs.

Mitayayo Primary School Sign

This photo of the sign was actually taken before it was sent off to Africa where the children are eager to learn and knowledge really is light.

I just wrote an article about acrylic paint, which tells in broad strokes why it is so great for signs.

We often get questions like “Why is my sign unvarnished? What can I do to protect it?”

The answer is simple – nothing! The acrylic paint we use is great for outdoors, and because we don’t varnish it, it can always be touched up in a number of years.

Acrylic paints stay bright and don’t yellow like oil paints do. They are ideal for signs and outdoor artwork.

Here is a beautifully done sign by one our artists:

We do all our art by hand and never print our signs. This means that we can put any picture you want onto one of our hand painted signs! Lots of people see our gallery and think that’s all they can have. If you need something custom made, just ask.

Holidays are never long enough. We just made a sign from someone who wished to extend theirs with a picture. Our artists were able to copy their favourite holiday snap, creating a long-lasting reminder of a summer day in Spain. Unfortunately, the first attempt by our artists was in the wrong proportions, not leaving adequate space for the desired text. The painting was so stunning, however, that we could not face simply binning it. Somebody had the bright idea to put it in a driftwood frame to produce a brilliant piece of art. The frame is not real driftwood, but a more durable HDU imitation. Check out the final house sign, as well as the one we messed up – decide for yourself which came out nicer!

On our house signs website, we offer a lot of standard signs for people to choose from.  However, we can create almost anything (like the above example shows.)  The best way to get something like this is to fill in the form on our custom signs page.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and some of our customers obviously agree. In addition to ordinary house signs, we are occasionally asked to make signs which have no words, just a hand painted image. Here are two examples, a fish and three badgers, painted in a matching style:

To see a gallery of available artwork, or to request a custom picture, go to our image gallery.

Fairies and butterflies are some of the most popular things to have on a house sign. Our customers frequently request images like this one:

Try an image like this one on Slate!

Every so often we get a request for a 3D Sculpture. Although this is obviously quite a lot of work, some of the results are truly amazing. Check out this fairy tale scene -

Using HDU makes sculpture much easier than when using wood. HDU has no grain and is easier to carve. The person with the chisel still needs to have an artistic eye though.

This sign is carved out of one thick piece of HDU. You can easily request a sculpted sign using our custom sign page.

Winnie the Pooh has got to be one of England’s most popular storybook characters as well as being a personal favourite of mine. We have done quite a few Pooh Bear house signs now. Here is a scene from the hundred-acre woods that I think is really nice:

Of course the thing that makes it great is the fact that it is based on the original artwork by Ernest Shepard rather than the Disney cartoons. (Apologies for the mis-misspelling of ‘Hunny’ on the sides – obviously a bit of a slip-up!)

If you like this click through for a gold on green sign.