Pallet wood is the perfect medium for creating pieces that need to look rustic, mismatched, or weathered.
The more unique the piece of wood, the more unique your piece will be!
For this project, I took pallet wood pieces that were too small to be used for other projects.
I marked out a slight curved angle at the top and cut them with a jigsaw.
I then measured where I wanted the bottoms to be and cut those with a jigsaw also.
Using more scraps of pallet wood, I measured two matching squares to form the sides of my planter box and a longer piece that is as wide as my pallet pumpkin to form the front.
With this particular project, it is ok if your measurements aren’t perfect or your boards don’t line up just right.
That adds to the charm of a weathered piece!
To brace my planter box while I measured and marked, I used a few more pieces of pallet wood.
If you have someone to help you, you can simply have them hold the pieces as you mark.
To secure the front of the planter box to the sides, you need to pre-drill your wood.
Using a screw and your drill, drill in the screws until they are just into the wood.
Then put your front piece back onto your side pieces (which are still all being braced with your scrap wood) and drill that front piece into the sides.
With pallet wood be very careful to not split the wood, as it can often be old and dry.
Put your planter box to the side and focus now on your pumpkin itself.
Take a piece of scrap wood that is just shorter than the width of your pumpkin. Place it on the backside in the center of your pumpkin.
If pallet wood wasn’t so dry, I would recommend to just screw the support piece to the pumpkin from the backside, but you run the risk of splitting the wood.
To decrease this risk, screw the pallet wood planks into the support piece from the front.
From here, test to see if your pumpkin is secure. If not, add a second support at the bottom of your pumpkin.
Now you can screw on your planter box. Line it up with your sides and flip the whole thing over so the back of your pumpkin is facing up and the planter is face down on your work space.
Screw in the planter box sides very carefully, making sure you don’t split your pumpkin pallet pieces!
Sand down the whole piece, but not too much.
You don’t want to lose the unique pallet wood texture but you do want to rid it of any splinters and make your cut edges not look so crisp.
Now that the base of your pumpkin planter is done, it is time to paint!
I use homemade chalk paint made from hardware store paint samples and calcium.
To get a rustic look, I painted multiple coats of different colors of paint. I used a “drybrush” technique, where I only had a tiny bit of each color of paint on my brush and I used long strokes in different places to give an overall weathered look.
To finish, I used a clear wax and a dark wax to set my colors.
To make the pumpkin stem I used a small piece of scrap wood that was already painted green! I added a little bit of dark wax and screwed it into the front of my pumpkin.
This pumpkin planter isn’t designed to hold dirt and plant. (it doesn’t even have a bottom!) But you can use it to hold potted plants or small potted succulents!