This is a project that my wife and I have been wanting to do for a while. I started it last weekend and while cutting the first one out it caught in the drill and sliced open my finger. Pretty nasty too. That will teach me to wear gloves when working with sheet metal. So a week later and well on my way to recovery, we decided to tackle it again. This time we had much better success.
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We looked all over the web, local nurseries and my inventory of seed catalogs for cute, affordable and durable plant tags. Durable, in our case, means standing up to years of being soaking wet. We found some cute ones, some affordable ones, and some durable ones.. but none with all three attributes. They were all either cheap, ugly, or expensive ($14 each for plant tags, really??). So what do we do, we design and make our own! I think they turned out really well. Here’s how we made them. |
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We started off with a 24×24 sheet of fairly thin sheet metal, cutting it down to 1.5″ strips. |
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Then we cut those down to individual sizes. |
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Using a metal stamp kit we stamp in each of the names we’re planting this year. |
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Grind off the sharp edges. |
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Using a fine point sharpie we draw in the metal stamps for better definition, and then drill a hole in the center of the tag. |
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12 gauge wire we bought in 10′ sections, cut down to 16″ and bent in half. These form the legs. |
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And here we go, the final result. Pretty sweet! |
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Here is the back of it. You can see it is just bolted together. |
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Quite a few, and still a few more to go. We need about 25 for this year. We are quite pleased with these though. We estimate they cost about 50 cents each to build. Way better than the cheap ones at the nursery and a lot cheaper than the metal ones you can get online. |
LOVE these! Sorry about your finger. They are adorable and will hold the test of time! great job!
Just a thought. Dad and i are worried your cute tags MIGHT gets stolen if you use them in the public garden spot. People might take them and use them in their spots or at home if they are growing the same things. Be careful! So cute!!!!
We will have to keep an eye on them! A lot of people in the community garden have their items in the plot, like wheel barrows, trellises, some even have large outdoor vases and sculptures. Hopefully they will be ok!