Homemade Art - Georgia Cut Out

Day In.

I (Stuart) am dedicating this blog post to my good buddy, Bob.  He mentioned to me this weekend, at Jay and Rebecca's wedding (congrats to y'all!), that he really loved the blog.  So how can I not show love for a fan?!? This one is for you, Bob!

A few weeks ago, Anna brought home some pallets from her work.  Apparently they get a couple of pallets a month, and need to get rid of them.  Because of Pinterest, I thought I could surely make something cool out of one.  My cousin, Lindsay, gave me an idea that I want to do at some point (maybe next Forth of July) from her cool blog, You're Welcome Savannah.  In order to call it art (and not plagiarism), I feel like it has to be original. So the following is my attempt at Pallet Art.

I started with just a plain old pallet...

(This is not actually the pallet I used, but I wasn't smart enough to take pictures before. You get the idea)

I took off all the boards, which was a surprisingly, incredibly difficult task. Some of the boards cracked as I pried them off and rendered useless.  I think it was also 145 degrees at the time, so I sweated about 3 gallons.

Next, I got a state map of Georgia and meticulously cut out only the state.

I then placed the cut out on the boards and traced the state.

Once the entire state was traced, I took each board individually and cut along the lines I traced.

Then I laid all the boards out and realized I had no real way to attach them to each other...

I got an 1/8" sheet of particle board (the same cheap board that backs all the book cases you see at Target) and traced the state cut out onto it.  Then I cut it out, about an inch or two inside the lines I traced.

I then placed all the boards onto the cut out to make sure the backing wouldn't show.

Then I used wood glue to hold all the boards in place.

Once the glue dried, I used 1/2" screws  to make sure the boards were attached to backing.

I then added picture hanging wire to the back so we could hang this creation I made.

Then we put it up...

I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. Here's a closer up picture of it.

Anna likes it too, which makes me feel good about it.  She also thinks I could sell them on Etsy.  I could make them for any state, so if you have one in mind, let me know.

Thanks for reading this, especially Bob.

Day Out.
Stuart