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Making
Decoupage Plant Markers
Adding
plant markers to your home or classroom garden is a fun and educational
project. Plant markers are a great way to share the names of your
plants with visitors.
It's
also a good way to learn more about your plants, like their common and
biological names, flowering times, and how tall they may grow.
Best
of all, you now have a way to remember what you've planted.
Plant
markers are used in some of the most famous gardens to help visitors identify
the plants they enjoy and would like to try growing at home.
Markers
are used by the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) along our roadsides
to show people where native and wildflower plant species have been used.
They are also used to show where ceremonial trees have been planted.
A ceremonial marker at the Story City rest area in central Iowa points
out where the DOT planted the 1-millionth tree along our state's roadsides.
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Here's what you'll need:
- Can colored exterior spray paint (your preference on color,
we used green for this project to blend in with our garden)
- Can clear spray enamel paint
- Craft paint brush
- Decoupage liquid
- Newspaper or old cloth
- Scrap wood (available from local building supply stores, home
construction contractors, a neighbor's wood shop)
- Hammer and nails (length depends on thickness of wood)
- Picture and/or description of plant
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What to
do:
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Step
1: Have an adult cut the scrap wood into two sizes.
The plant stake should be approximately 12 inches long by
2 inches wide and no more than a 1/2-inch thick.
The plant marker may be cut to any desired shape approximately
4 inches wide by 5 inches tall, and up to 1 inch thick.
Step
2: Using the hammer, attach the stake to the back
of the marker with two nails. |
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Step 3:
Lay down the newspaper/cloth and place your markers on the paper.
Then spray the front and sides with the colored exterior paint.
Let dry completely, approximately 12 hours.
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Step
4: For our project we used digital photographs of our plants
and descriptions obtained from the Internet. We combined
them in a word processing software and printed them onto paper.
If you don't have a computer or digital camera, you can simply
write or type your plant description on a piece of paper. |
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Step
5: Attach the paper with your plant description
(and photo, if available) to the face of your plant marker using
a paint brush and the decoupage liquid as a glue. Then
apply the decoupage liquid over the top of the paper, sealing
the description and protecting it from smearing. |
Step
6: Spray the entire marker with at least two coats of
the clear enamel spray to protect the marker from the weather.
Step 7:
Use your hammer to pound the marker into the ground.
One thing we
did discovered with our project was that over time the sun tended to fade the
photographs we used, but the black text descriptions remained clear.
SAFETY NOTES:
Aerosol paints require proper ventilation and should not be used
by young children without adult supervision.
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