Pallet heart art

I had these pallet pieces left over from another project. I had painted them in blackboard paint and then left them outside. After a few weeks I noticed that the paint was chipping off and that I quite liked the weathered look so I wanted to do something with them that would keep that character.

I had these hardware thingies lying around and thought that they would work well to attached my 3 pallet pieces together. I lay my pallets upside down (I had never painted the bottom) and proceeded to attached the thingies to the pallets. The screws pictured here were to long so I went in search of shorter ones in my tool box. Luckily I found some as I was eager to get the project underway and didn't want to go to the hardware store first.

Some of the edges were quite rough so I sanded them down. I used an 80 grit sandpaper as it was the first piece in my box of sandpaper that I grabbed. Yes I did it by hand.
I then thought that I want to give them more of a weathered look so instead of just gently wiping the sanding dust away I grabbed a hard bristled brush we have lying around in the kitchen and scrubbed them down. I wasn't gentle.
While that was then lying in the sun drying I did the prep work for the painting.

I received this heart decor as a gift and realized that the heart is the perfect size for my pallet coat rack. I traced it onto a clear piece of contact paper and the cut it out with a craft knife. If you're not that lucky to have something like this lying around then you can print something out, in mirror image. Then use a piece of carbon paper to trace the image onto the paper side of the contact paper. Then cut it out.






I placed the contact paper over the pallets. Be sure that the contact paper covers the pallet so as not to get spray paint on the edges where you don't want it. I then just taped down the sides where the contact
paper wasn't sticking to the wood all that well.
Then I went to town with the spray paint. I sprayed about 4 thin coats. Just enough to let the red color stick out but not so much as to cover the weathered 'background'.

Remove contact paper and viola.