Pierrard creative paintings

What was once a hobby and a creative outlet has now become a side business for a local teacher whose hand painted signs are gaining popularity.
Shayla Pierrard, 26, who graduated from Hancock County High School in 2012 and is now a fifth-grade teacher at Cannelton Elementary School, has begun selling hand painted signs along with custom window paintings after picking up the skills after her son Easton Asbell was born nearly three years ago.

“After I had my son I just kind of needed a hobby so I just bought a couple of books and learned,” she said. “It took me I’d say at least a year to think that I was pretty good.”
She wasn’t starting from nothing because she already had the interest and had been making signs for her own use and for the school.

“Really my first year of teaching I was making all these cute little Halloween posters for a fall festival we were doing,” she said. “At that time I was like, it’s kind of silly that I spent all this time making all these words and stuff all cute, but now it’s turning into a good little side business for me.”
In October 2019 she began posting her best work on Facebook, which she now says isn’t nearly as good as her current stuff.
“When I look at the things I posted first there I look at it now and I’m like, oh, that wasn’t very good,” she said.

She was mostly doing custom lettering in the beginning, but that soon morphed into graphics and paintings plus lettering, and even painting murals on windows for public spaces.
“Once COVID hit Lona Kratzer (Morton) asked me to do the senior citizens building and put some spring stuff up just because they couldn’t go in the building any more,” she said. “Then this winter came around and I had reached out to Tina Snyder to ask if I could do some lettering classes at the library after all of this is over, and she asked me to submit a picture for the library.”

Pierrard also offered her services to paint the senior center again, so her work was in the public eye more than ever before, covering the front entrances of the senior center and the library.
Not that her work wasn’t seen before, because she’d already begun hand painting decorations and signs for weddings. She can make small decorations that are personalized for each couple, but she also rents larger items, like large mirrors with messages painted on them and other sizeable signs.
“I do make some pretty large, I think they’re two feet by three feet signs for weddings,” she said, explaining that she rents those rather than making new ones for each wedding. “I kind of felt like people made stuff for their wedding and then just didn’t know what to do with it so I just decided to rent that stuff.”

In all of her projects she gets help from her grandparents Denny and Cheryl Wroe.
“My grandpa makes the frames for me,” she said, adding that her grandmother stains them. “So they help me a lot.”

Now she’s coming up on the busy time of year, hand painting Christmas ornaments and making signs for people’s homes, which vary as much as the buyers.
“With the Christmas ornaments I just post some examples and I let people tell me what they want,” she said.
The signs run from about $20 for an eight by 10 and increase in size and price from there, although it depends a little on the content and the coloring.
“I’ll kind of be flexible with that depending on if they’ve asked me for five words or they’ve asked me for more, because it takes longer,” she said. “And if I’m using white on wood it takes a lot more coats so it takes more time.”

Being a side business and still a hobby, she needs to take her time making the signs, so she allows about two weeks for each one.
“If somebody were to ask me today and I didn’t have anything else to do I would say it’s going to be like one to two weeks,” she said, pointing out that there are many steps, including waiting for her grandpa to make the frame and her grandmother to stain it.
“I could be done with it in a week but I don’t like to rush myself in case other things come up,” she said.

Her school had been in-person all year until recently, so now she’s working remotely until January, which she said will actually be helpful.
“For me that’s given me a lot of time to get stuff done,” she said.

By Dave Taylor
dave.hancockclarion
@gmail.com