Homemade Button Garden Markers

By Admin1 on April 16, 2012 in Home Decor, Spring

It’s spring time and that means planting time! All the gardeners I know are pouring over seed catalogs and dreaming about their summer crops. Today I have a super quick, super fun homemade project that will help you remember which pot you planted lettuce in and which pot has the peas: Button Garden Markers!

The fun thing about this project is that it really inspires creativity. I used orange buttons for carrots, green buttons for peas and lettuce, and red buttons for tomatoes. But the possibilities are endless. Purple buttons for bunches of grapes, yellow for squash. What else can you dream up? The possibilities are only limited by the size of your garden!

Supplies:

Unfinished, small wood plaques. (Mine measure 3″ x 2″)
Craft paint or markers
Buttons – Check out some of Buttons Galore and More’s Button Candy Bags for inspiration and match them to whatever you are planting!
A wooden dowel 1/4″ diameter by 12″ long

Directions:

Decide which veggies you need to mark in your garden and gather up the appropriate buttons. For this tutorial, I’ll tell you how I made the Carrot Garden Marker.

Paint the wooden plaque in light white wash using white paint. Allow to dry.
Lay-out 3 orange buttons on the plaque. Use a small, medium, and large button to give the tapered appearance of your carrot. Glue them in place.
Using paint or permanent markers, add some green leaves to the top of your carrot. You can also draw a black decorative border around the edge of your plant marker and write the name of the crop if you wish.

See? I told you it was easy. Now – a word to the wise. This is a crafty project and it looks really cute, but remember if you are using these outside, they will need to be protected. I would recommend using paint and glue that you know can stand up to sun, heat and rain, or sealing them with a waterproof sealer.