Hello Fall Pallet Pumpkins

Happy Fall Ya'll!. Well I'm a little early I know, but I am trying to beat the Alabama August heat by daydreaming about fall and football and sweaters and pumpkins..... you get the idea! I haven't posted in quite a while! Work has a way of getting in the way!. But... I have quit my full time corporate gig and I am working from home FULL TIME! Can you say YIPPEE!! In my fall quest I decided to rip apart a pallet and make some fall decorations.

Aren't they adorable? I did not get all the pics of every stage. Ikr? I wasn't thinking blog until I was finished, but I will do my best to explain the steps. If you have never worked with pallet wood you are going to love it! You just have to know a few things about pallets... First, most are nailed together with some kind of screw nails. Which means you literally cannot just pull them apart with a hammer. You will need a deck wrecker, you can get one on Amazon. They are not too expensive. Or you can cut the nails with a sabre saw. I like to cut them because you can reuse the rusty nails. I like the way they look on certain projects. If they come out, you can just tap them back in. I always save rusty nails. I have drawers full of them. An old pallet project can look terrible with new nails. You can just lay your pallet wood out and draw your pumpkin. The first couple I did looked like apples. You gotta make the sides not so round. I think it looks more pumpkinlike.

Then you take a jig saw and cut out your pumpkin (or do like me, and get your husband to cut them out for you). I use a small brad gun to put it together. I just found a couple of thin wood strips to lay them on and nail them together.

I forgot to say that I also cut out a stem. just make it part of the center boards. Then comes paint. You can do this however you like. I mixed my red and yellow to make orange. I used a small block of wood to put the paint on the pumpkin. If I want a really layered chippy look, I don't use a brush. Its so easy and you just throw away the block of wood when you are finished. I let the orange dry and painted my stems green and then added a little gold. I found a pic of this technique. You literally just smear it on. Just let each layer dry before you add another.

Here is a rough paint pic.

After it dried I used some stain, maple I think, and went over the entire thing. This ages it and makes the colors really muted and the wood that is bare, will absorb at different amounts. I added the words HELLO FALL with a black paint marker. White might have shown up better? Maybe on the next one. Then I sprayed a clear sealer on the whole thing and added a burlap ribbon. I did put hangers on the back. You can lean or hang.