As promised on Instagram stories, I thought I would share a tutorial in case anyone else has access to a pallet and looking for a project!
The first step was to prep the pallet. Our slats were spaced apart, but I decided that I liked the look of them being closer together. I started to take them off and it was taking me forever so the Mr. took over this part of the project and worked much faster than I did. He took them off of both sides and then nailed them all onto one side closer together.
At this point I sanded it down a bit, but left it pretty rough because I liked the rustic feel of it and didn't want it to be too perfect. Next the kids and I spray painted the entire pallet white and when it dried I used painters tape to tape off where I wanted the stripes. This obviously doesn't have the correct number of stripes as the real flag, but I wanted to use each slat as a stripe to make it easier to paint. I just made sure there was a red one on the top and at the very bottom.
Up first were the red stripes!
Next I adjusted the tape a bit so I could paint the blue part and left the tape on what would be the white stripes so it didn't overspray too much.
Finally I was ready for the stars. I debated several ways to do this, but ultimately ended up making my own stencil. It was easy to do using any word processing program. You simply open a new document, go to Insert, then Shape, and finally Star.
I just copied and pasted the stars until I got them arranged in the pattern I wanted and printed it out. Then I used a straight edge razor and a ruler on a cutting board to cut out each star. It took forever, but was so worth it in the end!
I taped the stencil down and used white acrylic paint with a sponge paint brush.
I ended up having to move my stencil around after each section dried several times to get all 50 stars because I was worried about the paint smudging. I could have avoided this and painted them all at once, but that would have meant cutting out more stars.
Originally, I was going to put the flag on our screened porch, but ended up putting it down on our patio because I have so many other red, white, and blue things down there right now for summer.
To hang it we screwed a wire picture hanger in the back.
Then the Mr. found a stud, added a screw, and hung it for me!
I just love the way it looks down there and I feel like it finishes off the space perfectly!
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