At work, every year in late summer, we get a shit-ton of deliveries. Some of them, for example, copy paper and text books come on pallets. Last summer I got the brilliant idea that I was going to use some reclaimed pallet wood to make a few of those decorative wall hangings I see all over Pinterest. I had been to one of those pallet wood stenciled sign classes and and I was a little disillusioned that the sign wasn't actually made of pallet wood, but with NEW wood that was made to look old and weathered. I love the idea of recycling something old into something new and I had just bought my own jig saw the year before so I thought wood signs in shapes was the way to go.
I stayed after work a few days and cut up the pallets with my jig saw after I tried at home to actually take one apart (see my post Pallet Problems). Our head custodian took pity on me (a jig saw works, but not well - it is the WRONG tool for that job) and cut up a few more pallets for me to use. I was inundated with pallet wood, but for the plan I had, I needed some really long pieces, and I did not have many of those.
I created a template out of oaktag and arranged the wood on the floor so that I would be able to get the most out of the pieces I had. I kept all the "good sides" up for the front, put the "bad" sides on the back and arranged the wood to get the most mileage out of each piece. Then I glued them together with Elmer's Wood Glue. (I realized that the edges of pallet wood are not really parallel, so there were some problems with this - I invested in a mini hand plane after I spent quite some time sanding with a palm sander to get the edges to match up.)
The glue held really well. I placed my oaktag pattern on the glued wood and traced the heart shape. I cut it out with my jig saw, and sanded and still, the glue held. It held so well, in fact, that I didn't realize the cross pieces I had also attempted to glue on had never made contact, so they weren't stuck on at all. I leaned the heart up against the wall in the living room to decide what I wanted to paint on it and as it got jostled around during vacuuming and whatnot, it eventually came unstuck and I got disgusted.
Fast forward to THIS summer, and my continued attempts to finish projects I've started.
I got some screws of the right length from Home Depot, reattached the support pieces and painted the heart read with watered down craft paint so that you could see the woodgrain through the paint. That was another disappointment - I thought I'd be able to find STAIN in different colors, but apparently, that either doesn't exist or was not easily found. (I looked for orange to paint a pumpkin I had also cut out.)
So now here I am, with my pallet wood heart all finished EXCEPT for the lovely quote painted on the front. I'm not sure what I want to paint on it. I want it to be something down to earth. I love poetic quotes, and literature quotes like:
"My heart is and will always be, yours." Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
But I still keep thinking I should go with something like Adam Sandler's song from The Wedding Singer:
"I wanna make you smile, whenever you're sad,
Carry you around when your arthritis is bad.
Oh, all I wanna do is grow old with you.
I'll get your medicine when your tummy aches,
Build you a fire if the furnace breaks,
Oh it could be so nice, growing old with you."
I really like it because you know, that's what marriage is really about. BUT IT'S TOO LONG TO FIT!
Help!! Any suggestions?
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