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Regardless of
how long you've been gardening, there's always room for more garden signs.
The little white plastic ones sold at garden stores are fine, but have very
little room to write down everything you want to know about your plants.
And, by mid-season, rain has a way of reducing them to totally illegible.
Unless you have your own
laminator, that becomes very expensive. If you do, then the following
can also be done using it, but I would suggest that you only use one that
works with heat because the cold method laminator will ultimately open.
Materials Needed:
- Craft sticks (popsicle)
or 12" fresh sticks cut from 3/8" branches (free!)
- Pictures for each
variety of flower, plant, or vegetable you are planting. Or, use actual
seed packets and scan pictures. (I prefer to find and download pictures
and keep the extra seeds in the packets.)
- Roll of heavy-duty
CLEAR packaging tape.
- Small sandwich bags
(not zip-lock), if you want to view both sides of packets.
- OR, heat driven
laminator. The business card size is a great one to use, if you have
that.
What to do using
packaging tape:
1. a. If
pictures are downloaded, print them all on one page using the multiple
choice of your printer. Keep them roughly just under the size of a
business card.
b. If scanned pictures, put as many face down as possible on scanner bed,
reduce size to 2"x 3", and scan.
2. Using a surface
that won't "catch" your tape, lay picture down and cover front lower side
with one piece of packaging tape, leaving a 1/4" edge of tape below bottom
edge of picture. Fold each side to back, overlapping one edge and
catching top 2" of stick. Pinch lower 1/4" edges together.
3. Place upper piece
of tape so that it is slightly overlapping the upper bottom tape by 1/4" so
that rain won't seep in, leaving at least 1/4" above top of picture.
3. Snip from both
sides to edge of picture along upper 1/4" edge. Fold sides across back,
first.
4. Fold top edge
down over back top side of picture; fold both sides around back, overlapping
same as before. |
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