How to make a wooden pallet sign

I have been dying to make pallet signs since last weeks blog past of how to dismantle a pallet with out power tools. I was thinking that the first sign I make is going to be for my new craft room/office that is currently in the works.

I used three of the planks from the small pallet. Looking for ones that for the most part sat flat against the other planks.

Now we all know I love to upcycle and avoid using power tools. I decided to take apart a small wooden box that I had bought at Savers for .69.

While taking the box apart I hit one of the sides to hard and split it right in half. The universe was working in my favor because I had two perfect pieces to hold the back of the sign together.

Using my staple gun I stapled first around the edges of the support pieces.

(Not pictured-added later) Make sure to staple in the center of the planks where the planks abut.

And we have a solid and stable pallet sign that is ready to paint.

I wanted to paint the sign a milky teal color with out having to run out to buy additional paint. I mixed two parts teal to one part white using interior sample paint from Lowes. I stock pile these when I have coupons or when they are on the opps shelf. I don’t think I can ever leave Lowes without a sample can.

I wanted a distressed look and for the wood grain to still shine through. To accomplish this look don’t over saturate your brush you can always go back and add more paint.  I also left the edges of the board slightly unpainted.

Using my Silhouette Cameo software I came up for a stencil for the pallet. Make sure to measure you pallet to figure out how large your text can be. Before cutting out the stencil on blank stencils I suggest laying everything out in scrapbook paper or card stock.

I wanted a something witty to reflect my personality. I had once seen a tote from a fellow crafter that had the saying “I am so crafty I sweat glitter” on it. How perfect!

Once I got the spacing perfect in scrapbook paper I took out the blank stencils. I used Martha Stewart blank stencils that I bought at Michaels. I found these extremely hard to work with. The had come rolled and because of that I could not get them to flatten out. I have been told that Hobby Lobby sells the brand show offs that has flat 12×12 blank stencils for a fraction of the cost. (Guess who is going to Hobby Lobby soon).

Cut the stencil to size. They come 11×18 so I cut it down to 11x 12 so my first 3 lines would fit on this sheet and the last line could fit on the remainder piece.

You need to use the Silhouette mat for this loading it as media does not work.

The stencil was so curly that I didn’t think the sticky cutting mat was enough to hold ii so I used tape to hold down the edges. Make sure to pull back the film on the stencil before cutting. Also I cut this with my blade at 10 and I used the double cut setting.

 

This is where I ran into trouble I could not get the stencil to lay flat, no matter how much I taped it or laid the stencil under heavy materials. I ended up taping the stencil and then tracking the lettering to paint by hand instead of painting directly on the stencil.  This added a good extra hour or so to the project.

Make sure you use a thin enough brush to easily stay in the lines. I painted all the lettering with the interior white paint.

To emphasize the word glitter I painted over the white word with 3 coats of Martha Steward paint that I got on sale at Michaels.

I am so happy with the finished product I cannot wait until my craft room is done and I can hang it up.  I can see myself making a lot more of these signs to sell at my shows.

I would also like to give a shout out to the Silhouette Challenge group on facebook for helping me out with techniques for my first Silhouette project!

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