Recycle Pallet Boards and Nursery Pots To Make Neat Planters

This is one of my favorite garden DIY projects! 

We first made these five years ago and they are still going strong all year long in our garden.

It is cheap, fairly easy to do and gives me the BIG planters pots I want for my yard.

We noticed the big pile of empty tree pots at our local nursery and bought

 a couple of 15 gallon size for $6 each. 

We already had a pile of boards from dismantled pallets,

 so already this project is right up my alley...

CHEAP!

Here are the finished planters. 

I LOVE the different shades of the used boards and the rough grain. 

These nursery pots have a generous lip around the top which make

 the finished planters look neat.Before....and after!

The Welding Man trimmed each board to fit and we attached them

 with our handy nail gun using brads.

The nail gun runs on a small air compressor. 

It's one of my favorite tools for projects like this.

Just look at the neat colors and wood grain!

Sarlac Pit?

Here's how the brads look once the boards are attached. 

We used long ones so they would penetrate all the way thru and

 give us a generous length to bend down inside the planter. 

We used a block of wood and a pair of needle nose pliers for this part. 

This is the largest tree pot we've redone.

 It is 22 gallon, I believe, and it holds a full size rose bush aand two Walkers Low Catmint plants. 

We dry brushed it withour house trim paint and added a 

mitered board frame around the top for a nice finishing touch.

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Cracked Mirror To Painting Makeover

Broken Mirror to Painting Save

What do you do with a FOUR FOOT wide cracked mirror?

I saved this totally cool cracked mirror in its AWESOME frame
 with spray paint,tissue paper, Mod Podge, craft paint and clear sealer.

Read on to learn the details.
I

I started out with a beautifully framed mirror but ended up
 with this painting. How in the world did that happen?

It started out as a $9 Goodwill find with a gorgeous frame and a cracked  mirror.
 Four foot long and two and a half feet wide, it was perfect for our art wall, I thought.

What to do? The frame was still good. Why not turn it into a painting instead?
 Can't fix the mirror so I figured why not cover it up?

I turned to my tried and true method for covering up and adding texture.....crumpled tissue paper and mod podge! I taped the crack on front and back with clear packing tape.

 See how the tissue has dried to a nice pearly opaque textured finish?

 I spray painted the frame with Walnut Brown, Leather Brown

 and a bit of black dry brushing.


Time to paint!

 I knew I wanted something as a vivid blue focal point, so I began layering shades
 of blue, lavender, teal, purple and black around a white circle. There is also a
bit of pink and dark green in there. The crumpled tissue really
grabbed the paint and gave this a nice interesting texture.
 I knew I wanted a branch with a nest and some eggs and
here is how it ended up.

I like it!

 I even used my favorite new paint tool, a Deco Color paint pen, to add some of the finer details.
 The Welding Man likes it too. And you know what?
 If I get tired of this I can always repaint it as something else.
 I'm adaptable that way.

Here's a close up of the nest with four eggs since we have four kids. Sure, they're all grown and flown now but since we've moved we all live in the same town, how cool is that? We see them all so often that our empty nest isn't really empty after all!

Now I have to rearrange our living room art wall to make it fit.

Lovin' how this cracked mirror with the beautiful frame will look up there!