A ton of friends who have seen this on Facebook already are asking for a tutorial. So here is what I've got to offer the world of Pinterest. I'll try to address everything here, so please don't flood me with questions. I have two kids and a dog that need my daylight hours already.
Stats of my project:
Dimensions: 42in x 50.5in
Text: Set in Century Schoolbook. It's a quote from The Cat in the Hat.
Paint colors: White primer for the pallet. For the text, I used FolkArt acrylic paint (only $1 a bottle!) from Walmart, the colors "Licorice" and "Turner's Yellow."
Main inspiration: I loved this "Be the Good" sign by Wood Connection, and this "Love" sign by Young and Crafty. I also followed most of their instructions, so please refer to them for additional ideas and pictures. I didn't take pictures as I went, but they did.
Materials list:
Pallet wood (more on that later)
A sawzall (the saw that can cut through nails)
An electric sander
Paint and brushes
A large print of your text (see Step 5)
Pencil
Carbon paper* (see Step 5)
Step 1: Obtain pallet wood
This is step one because you'll need to know what wood you have to work with. I ended up using two pallets to make this, and I didn't use all the wood. Also, I went dumpster diving for those beauties, and I later found out you should ask permission for them. I guess the stores can get money for them? So I say find some behind a store and then go in and ask them if you can have some.
Step 2: Deconstruct the old pallets
My tall, dark, handsome, and extremely strong husband did this for me. We borrowed his brother's sawzall to do the job. He cut off the side pieces, through the nails, and then pried the wood off the middle piece. It was hard work and took almost 2 hours, just an FYI. You could also just cut through the wood on the top, instead of through the nails, but I wanted the wood to have that rustic "I used to have nails in me!" look. I had 1x4 and 1x6 boards to work with, which did add some wonderful variety to the final piece.
Step 3: Assemble the new pallet (also see Step 4)
I picked the best looking boards and then laid them down in a random fence-like row, but not perfectly aligned on top or bottom, so it looked something like the Wood Connection's "Be The Good" board. Then I took two of the pallet side pieces and nailed everything to them, so it looked like a fence. I also tried to get the wood to be as close together as possible so that I had few gaps where text would be hard to paint. I didn't use wood glue at all. I then took an electric sander and sanded the wood down a bit to get off the sharp edges and smooth everything out for painting.
Step 4: Paint that bad boy
I would have used the Wood Connection's technique for a white wash, but I was lazy. Painting it straight up was easier. I probably would recommend painting the wood BEFORE putting it together so that you don't end up with ugly paint stretching between the gaps in the boards. I HATE those things, but I only got a few and decided it added to the rustic look. Or at least that is what I tell myself.
Step 5: Prep and transfer your text
To enlarge the print of my text for tracing, I went to FedEx and handed over a PDF file of my text on a flash drive. They gave me a print 36in x 48in for $10. I hear I could have gotten an ever better deal had I gone to Staples and asked for an engineer's print for only $5. Just an FYI.
I transferred my text to the wood the same way the Wood Connection ladies did it, except I used my sewing tracing paper instead of the carbon paper she used. It comes in all sorts of colors instead of just black, so I used the yellow to blend in with the white. Worked perfectly, and I didn't have to buy anything more for the project. You could also use the old trick of rubbing some pencil lines behind the text on the backside of the paper and then tracing on the front side. The graphite will then transfer to the wood just fine, and it will only cost you a pencil.
(The word "fun" traced onto the pallet. Hard to see here, but it was easy
to paint and not worry about the lines showing around the edges.)
I also was careful to make sure that no letters disappeared into the seems of the wood, meaning the bulk of their shape wasn't tossed in between two boards. I had to especially careful about the byline since the letters were little. I had to move the whole thing around a bit before I found a good spot where the text was square with the pallet and no small letters were lost.
Step 6: Paint your text
I used my daughter's watercolor brush for the outline, and then filled it in using a slightly bigger brush. I chose to highlight two words to bring a bit of focus to such a big piece, and I picked an accent color that went well with the room, aka my yellow couch throw. The yellow words needed a second coat while the black did not.
Step 7 (optional): Distress it
I didn't do this because I was too eager to be done. But I liked the distressing technique described here by Young and Crafty. Sounded pretty simple to me. I might add some distressing now that I've had the pallet up for a week. Sometimes the paint job of the text is too good and it looks printed on. I've even had people ask me whether it was vinyl lettering. I'll take it as a compliment to my steady painting hand, but rustic was what I was going for.
Step 8: Hang it up!
My ever so faithful husband was again eager to help with his power tools. He used three metal brackets to attach this to the wall, but he also made some of the bracket holes bigger so that we could hang it up on nails on the wall, like a photo. Nails in three studs, I might add. "Cute" pallet art is heavy!
Now go to, my fellow blog people. It is fun to have fun, and NOW you know how.
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