up-cycled pallet primitive American flag

final product

As most people who follow my post know i love to up-cycle and re-purpose whenever possible. This project is no different. We used an old pallet and gave it a bit of funky, primitive, patriotic charm.

Supplies needed:

• pallet
• paint (red, white, and blue)
• 2" paint brush
• saw (demo saw works best)
• aluminum roof flashing
• heavy duty scissors or snips
• hammer and a few nails

stage 1; decide where to cut your palet.
I wanted to have the overall scale of a rectangle. So i measured my pallet across and it was 40" then measured down about 8 boards and it was 34" so that's where we made our cut @34"

stage 1 determining where to cut the pallet

stage 2; cutting your pallet
using a demo saw or sawzaw cut along the pallet slates in every place that the excess slats are attached (in our case three places) if you don't have a saw use the entire pallet and give it a bit more raw look.

stage 2 cutting to get desired look

stage 3; rough sand top surface and edges of pallet.
this helps clean up your pallet and aids in giving it more rustic appeal. be sure to use a mechanical sander (orbital or belt it really doesn't matter).

stage 3 rough sanding project

stage 4; dry brushing the pallet
because i want the over-all look to closely resemble a flag will use the mental picture of the American flag as reference. start first red stripe off to the right and lightly paint (you want to see sparatic paint coverage) in other words your project surface should show through. skip every other line and paint out flag pattern.

stage 4 red, white, and blue paint

stage 4 red stripes painted out

stage 5; painting the white stripes.
with a clean brush paint out white stripes with the same method used in stage 4. i left the first 4 boards free off paint where the blue field of stars will go.

stage 5 white stripes painted out

stage 6, painting the blue field for the stars.
start on the right side and paint towards the left. this helps give you a clean line where the field meets the stripes. paint out using same method as in above stages.

stage 6 painting out the star field blue

stage 7; cutting out stars from roof flashing.
the funky and primitive part of this project is all in the stars (you want them to be a bit off and odd looking).
Using 10' aluminum roof flashing cut 5 strips as wide as each slat of pallet. then cross cut into rectangles. stack into piles of 3-4 and cut out some funky shaped stars. BE CAREFUL FLASHING IS SHARP!!

stage 7 roof flashing for stars

stage 7 strips

stage 7 bundled rectangles

stage 7 my just-a-bit funky stars

stage 8, attach stars to pallet.
use small head nails (not finish nails they wont hold because heads to small) and randomly place and attach each row. we only used 16 stars to help achieve overall look (it's ART).

stage 8 attaching stars

this super fun and easy project has a great unfinished look and can be done in about 2hours (including dry time of paint)

also, because the project base was a pallet it will hang pretty easy with some good deck screws.