Tara Being Tara: Pallet Art, or, I am an Artiste

There are so many awesome pallet projects floating around the internet. Bookshelves, wine racks, art pieces... they're everywhere. I happened to mention this to my neighbor who is a landscaper, and he brought me home my very own pallet! Thanks, Bob!

It sat on our driveway for a few weeks while we (I. Zac was negative interested, because since it was wood, he knew it was going to be major work for him!) tried to figure out what project we wanted to make. We narrowed it down to two finalists:

                                     

This gorgeous coffee table

                                 

This cool art piece.

Ultimately, the art piece won out because caster wheels cost a zillion dollars, Zac was pretty sure the coffee table would be too big for our living room, and we had a large space in the family room where we needed an art piece anyway. Score.

The cost for this project is:

Pallet - $0
Paint - $0 (already had it)
Round sponge brushes ($2.99. Bought the cheap set. Worked like a champ. Score).

Yeah, the whole freaking thing cost $2.99. Because we are super awesome like that. And we have well connected neighbors.

This was the best kind of joint project because we each had to do our parts while the other person wasn't home for various reasons. That meant Zac got to cut the pallet and build the "canvas" without me saying things like, "Are you sure it should be that long?" "What if you turn it the other way?" "Can I use the saw?"

It also meant that I got to paint without hearing things like, "That red is too dark." "Add another line over there." "Are you sure you want to include that many flowers?"

Ahh sweet marital bliss.

Anyway, the pictures are a bit crazy because I found out mid-project that Zac had taken our good camera to a football game. So instead of great pictures of me painting, you can see pictures like this:

Go CATS!

But anyway... the first step in this process was for Zac to cut the pallet and turn it into a canvas.

He took the boards off of the pallet... and how much do you love that we do projects like this in our living room, without even rolling up the rug? We are hard core.

This is how he put them together...

And this is what it looks like finished!

He did a fantastic job - all of the boards line up perfectly. We didn't sand it at all - we wanted that rough look and feel to it. A few of the boards were more rough than others, and the brown paint pen I used for the branches probably won't ever be used again, but it was worth it.

Time to bring out my trusty paint supplies. Thank you, Alpha Gamma Delta, for making me do enough crafting to accumulate this supply. I really should use this stuff more often!

I followed this tutorial here, which was really helpful. The project itself was so simple. It took me a while (3 hours, probably?) but that was because my cheap brush pack only had one circle brush of each size so I had to clean them off and could only do one color at a time.

The tutorial was inspired by this World Market art piece, and I liked how there were more colors and flowers than the tutorial, so I modeled mine off of the original art.

                                               

The first step was to draw branches onto the pallet. At first, I followed her picture almost exactly because I was afraid to mess up. You can't really mess this one up. As I went on, I started to just draw some crazy lines.

Then, I started with the bursts. I did one color at a time, and honestly chose the colors as I went along. I put in the colors until I had enough big bursts, then went through and added the smaller bursts one at a time.

The finished product:

And here it is hanging in our living room. The colors tie in really well with our pillows. It is so perfect in the room - I'm not sure how we ever lived without it!

And a picture so you can see it with the throw pillows. 

The best part is when people come over, they almost always notice it and want to know where we got it. Oh, you know, I just made it. No big deal!

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