Craft Projects, Pallet Projects

“Love” pallet signs

My girlfriends and I had a craft night last weekend and made small pallet signs.

Love sign_Jess

Here’s the gist of how I made the signs (I had to make 3 in half an hour, so no pictures):

  1. Cut the wood off of the pallet using a reciprocating saw
  2. Line up the wood you want to use as the front of the sign face down, then place two pieces of wood perpendicular as the back supports
  3. Screw or nail in the supports
  4. Using a circular saw, trim the edges of the signs so they are straight
  5. Sand down the sign
  6. Add picture hanging hardware to the back

I’ve made pallet signs before, so if you’d like more detailed steps on how I constructed the actual sign, check out this post.

{A Smith of All Trades} Pallet Bar Sign

The only difference was my nail gun wasn’t working, so I screwed in the back supports instead of nailing them in.

Carrie found an adorable “Love” sign on Pinterest that we decided to do our own take on. We painted the signs using mint and metallic gold paint. The gold paint didn’t show up well on the pallet, so we covered the whole sign in stain to help the paint pop.

Here’s what we came up with:

Carrie’s Sign:

Love Sign_Carrie

Amy’s sign (she wrote “my heart” in Gaelic):

Love Sign_Amy

And my sign:

Love Sign_Jess1

They are so stinkin’ cute! I’m not sure where I’ll put mine yet — I was thinking in our bedroom, but it isn’t that big so I don’t know if it will look right on any of our walls. I’m also toying with adding it to a gallery wall I’ve been working on for months. I suck at putting gallery walls together and never seem to get them quite right. Plus, I always seem to hang the same photos over and over. So I want to rework the gallery with art in it, so this might fit in nicely.

Since I know I want to hang it up, I added picture wire to the back. I also added soft gel pads so it doesn’t muff up my walls.

Love sign_back

Another successful craft night! Do you ever craft with friends? What sorts of things do you make? We are always looking for fun ideas.

Craft Projects

Patriotic Cornhole Boards

Cornhole3

My step dad is super handy (the understatement of the year) and built my little sister a set of cornhole boards last year. He painted them white so she could spruce them up with a design of her own. Last weekend she came over to paint them — they turned out awesome! (Sorry — No tutorial on the actual boards in this post since I wasn’t a part of the construction.)

Emily used paint from Michaels for her boards. She taped off her stripes and drew on her stars before painting each board. She even painted around each star by hand, which I thought was super impressive. DISCLAIMER: Only one star was harmed (read: painted over) in the creation of these boards.

Two coats on each, and she was d-o-n-e done! The are so cute, don’t ya think?

Cornhole2

The only thing cuter than her patriotic boards (and my garden behind them) is Em!

Cornhole1I guess craftiness runs in the family 🙂

We will be using these boards at our Memorial Day picnic/Em’s birthday celebration this weekend!

Christmas, Holiday

Wooden Reindeer

Today I have got to show you one of my favorite Christmas gifts of the year. Our neighbors made us a wooden reindeer!!

OMG SO STINKING CUTE! (Imagine giddy screams when you read that…)

Reindeer

1. Is this the cutest thing you have ever seen? It i officially one of my favorite Christmas decorations.

2. They made this themselves! So impressed.

3. What is even more impressive is that they made A TON of them. Yeah, we weren’t the only lucky ones to receive this gift this year! What a thoughtful gift.

Reindeer Pieces

Another perk of the reindeer — he disassembles into four easy-to-store pieces! #Winning

Thanks you, Allie & Chad. I love my, errrr our reindeer. But for real, he is mine. And I need to come up with an awesome name for him.

Happy Thursday! (Read: Is it Friday yet? Sheesh!)