Pallet Art

Out the back of our place we have a couple of pallets. I haven't been able to bring myself to throw them out, they scream DIY to me!

A while back I tried to use one to make a side table. I was only able to salvage short pieces of timber though because the nails had rusted leaving the longer bits unusable. Bummer.

Last week, inspired by this pin, I decided to make a piece of art to hang in the laundry. Although I decided to have a quote on my boards instead of a picture.

You can kind of see the corner of it here in the post I did about my floor mat.

Here's how it came together:

I got together the couple of pieces of timber and sawed up a couple more. They were absolutely filthy from being outside for so long so I gave them a good scrub and put them back out in the sun to dry.

Now, when I go into a DIY I generally don't think more than one step ahead. It probably would be a good idea to plan the whole thing out first and then get started, but it's just not how my little brain works :)

So when it came time to join up the boards I couldn't decide if I should glue, nail or screw the support plank into the other planks.

First up I decided to use nails. The top two on each side went in ok, but as I started hammering in more nails the top ones would pop right out! Definitely not what I wanted.

I changed tack and decided to glue the boards down first. I used a stack of old text books to hold down the boards while the glue dried (I always knew the would come in handy!).

Once the glue was dry I decided to add screws as well. They went in a lot better than the nails and in no time I had a canvas to start working on.

I decided to use white paint and a letter stamps to write out my quote. I did a practice run on the back of the boards while the glue was drying and I liked how it looked.

Instead of using my normal clear acrylic block to do the stamping I used a clear plastic lid. I did this because I was often stamping across the join in to boards and wanted something that had enough give for me to press into the join.

I also started each word from the middle and worked out so that my mid-line stayed nice and neat.

 And here we go. My new pallet art! It's perfect for out laundry :)