Sue’s Pallet Christmas Tree
The time is here, Christmas decorating. We make it a tradition in our family, as many of you do as well, to hold off decorating until the day after Thanksgiving. This year I decided to try my hand at something I’d talked about for a while, but never got to. Again I knew, it needed to be inexpensive, fairly quick to make, and made with things I already had or were easy to acquire.
So, here is the starting point, a crate with a side that was rather beat up and worn. However when one looked deeper, a nicer side appeared. Hmmm, how many times has this happened when I’ve met a person for the first time? Makes me think I should take a little more time and not be so quick to judge…and I’m not talking about wooden pallets here.
Ok, so I’ll keep this short and sweet.
After placing the crate on our wood working table, Darren and I drew angles for the tree with a long straight edge and a pencil. We were careful to make the lines inside the nails as to keep our saw sharp, and the cutting easy.
2. Darren cut both the good front side and also the few slats in the back. We left the last slat to use it as a stand, which Darren reinforced with more wood to keep the tree from falling over.
3. As you can see, this pallet was a bit rustic, but I think this can add to the charm. I added white paint to the tops of each branch line, to make it look like fresh snow had fallen.
4. From here, the green paint was brushed on. I didn’t do anything to the back few slats, but there was no need. I used a foam brush and tried to leave some of the natural wood come through. I know next time I will do better.
5. Not sure what to do for a star, I found this star pattern online, blew it up, printed it, and used it as a template. The pieces were cut using thin white boards we had left over and nailed to the top triangle.
6. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to decorate the tree, or add lights, or leave it as it was, so I tried putting lights on it, but found I really didn’t like it that much, so I left it plain. It sits on my porch now, however, I think next time, I will look for a long narrow pallet, (did you know that they come this way?) to keep the tree fitting better on my porch.
