DIY Egg Sign

DIY how to flexible egg sign eggs available switch
If you have chickens in your backyard, you might like to sell eggs to passersby. So, you put up a sign that says “eggs for sale”, but might not always have eggs available. The solution is a flexible egg sign. The bright yellow on the open sign only shows up when there are eggs for sale.

The sign is actually composed of two separate signs, so the sign is visible to travelers coming from either direction. When the sign is flipped down, there is no bright yellow. This is a much more effective visual notification than the words and shape of the egg sign alone, especially when viewed from a fast car. We’ll teach you how to make one yourself!

How to make your own flexible egg sign

Requirements:

Step one: Take a toilet seat. Why? Well, a toilet seat is basically the shape of an egg, if you would extend the end in a gently sloping point. If you don’t have a toilet seat handy, you can cover your toilet seat with paper and cut out the form.

We happened to have a brand new toilet seat to use for this project we found for 10$.

With the toilet seat, create several eggy shapes on newspaper until you are satisfied with the shape. You can see our final template below.

Step two: Take a 3/4″ plank (we used pine), and lay it down flat. Using your stencil as a model, to draw an egg shape on the board. We made 2 signs, one for traffic in either direction.

Step three: Use a jigsaw machine, to cut out your two eggs.

egg sign cut out

Step four: Draw a straight horizontal line, through your two eggs, dividing the two eggs between a top quarter and the bottom three quarters. Use your jigsaw machine and a straight edge, to cut through this line. This line must run parallel the ground in your finished sign.

egg sign how to cut

Step five: Use hinges and screws, to screw the two top parts of the egg back together with the bottom parts. It may be necessary to slice more of the wood off with your jigsaw, to give your hinges more room to swing.

Note: The side on which you attach the hinges will be the inner side of your egg side.

hinges and screws cartoon drawing

Step six: Time for a paint job for your eggs!

Put the two eggs next to each other, with the top part down, so that the egg has a “flat spot” on top. Mark with a line where the top part ends on your eggs. After you’ve done this, check to make sure the oval is equal on both eggs.

Step seven: You can now draw the colors and text on your eggs. How to do this is largely up to your taste. Just make sure that the text “FRESH” fits above the line you marked on your egg, without touching the moving part of the sign.

Instead of freehanding our lettering, we used a stencil printed out using Word Art.

egg sign stencil text

We also painted the section of the egg above the line a attention-getting yellow, so that motorists would know if we had eggs, just by looking for our yellow sign. No yellow? No eggs.

 

On the backside of the egg, make sure the text “Sorry No” fits on the back of the moving part. Don’t forget, the “Sorry No” has to be written upside-down on the egg!

We regularly keep the black text crisp with a sharpee, the entire sign itself is fully repainted once a year.

Step eight: When you’re happy with your paint job, attach your two eggs on a pole outside your house near the road. The black bolts we used are placed in the text part of the egg sign, so you don’t really notice them from a distance. Your egg sign is now finished, travelers will be able to see that you have eggs for sale!

egg sign fresh

More about eggs

Other helpful articles we wrote to help you get started with chickens are:

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