Welcome Summer with a Wooden Pallet Sign

As temperatures reach the 25° mark this weekend, I am reminded how short our spring really is in Northern Alberta. Two weeks ago there was still 2 ft of snow in some places. Now, there is no snow, the bugs are out and the trees are budding. The warm weather gets me thinking about making some summer crafts to decorate the house.

I seem to be in a blue jean repurposing mood lately. I have the back pockets of many pairs of jeans cut out and ready to make something with. I also have these tiny little pockets that are sometimes inside the front pocket of jeans.

I recently saw a sign made with a jean pocket and wooden flowers on Pinterest and thought about how I could create something similar.

After choosing a font I liked, I traced the letters for “Welcome Summer” and used carbon paper to put them onto one of my pallet signs. I am finding that I really like using my ball point burning pen for when I am burning larger sections

For the flower, I started by getting four of my small wooden hearts; the ones made from cracked wood slices. I had to look through quite a few to find four of a similar size and thickness. These would be the petals of my flower. I used yellow watercolour paint on the hearts; this allows the wood grain to push through.
I tried a smaller maple wood slice for the middle of the flower but it was too thick so I decided to try to use one of my hard pine cones. My initial thought was to use the bottom but the pinecone had other ideas. It is REALLY difficult to cut a pinecone. I ended up using my anvil loppers that I use to cut small branches. I just kept clipping closer and closer to the base until I couldn’t grab anymore. I like the way it turned out.

The stem of my flower is just some wheat stalks bunched and glued together.

The cutest part is the tiny little jean pocket flower pot.

Everything was glued on with Weldbond. I find it to be stronger than wood glue or hot glue.