A Wall Hanging made from Pallet Boards and Birch Bark

 I had fun making a wall hanging from old pallet boards and birch bark recently. I was wanted to put something on a fairly big wall in our living room but nothing we had already seemed quite right. I didn't want to go out and buy some expensive picture and I really liked the idea of having something homemade and original. What should we do?....

 I had made a small tree from birch bark a while back and I liked it an had received many compliments on it and so I thought it would be fun to do something of that nature just on a larger scale. As I was considered this idea I decided I wouldn't be able to get a piece of birch back as big as I would want for the base so I would need to figure out something different. I decided that old pallet boards might look neat. So this is what I did:

I found the stack of boards that we had (that had originally been pallets) in a stack from the tearing down of our outdoor shower. My first step was just to kind of lay them out and see what would work.

Then after figuring out what width and height would work I started cutting the boards to size.

Next step was to wash the boards up a little and then I nailed them together.

I had decided that it would be neat to have the first chapter of Psalms on it as it talks about being like a tree planted by streams of water. I thought it would be fun to have scripture on our walls like that and I also liked the reference to a river. My first step in putting the verse on was simply to look it over and kind of plan it out in my head and then I wrote it on (free hand) with pencil. Painting the words was the next step. I think that is rather fun - but not as fun as the next step!

This picture shows a little better how I wrote it and then painted it.

 The next step was to add a tree (or trees) made out of birch bark. I just needed to cut them to shape and then I used hot glue to stick them on. I ended up having to piece together different sections of the tree.

 Next step was to add leaves. I went out and picked a leaf to help me get the shaped right. After cutting a bunch of leaves I stopped worry to much about the shape though. I also added some lichen to the tree - especially around the base.

 The leaf placement was challenging.

 We are pretty happy with the finished product though. I am going to enter it in the fair and then hopefully we can get it hung up.

 While I worked on that Mara worked on making a picture frame from pallet wood to frame a picture she took. We plan on hanging that in another place in the living room (After it goes to the fair as well).

 Do you ever make things from pallets? I would love to hear what you do!

I will be linking this to Funky Junk Interiors.