Everyone loves a deer head in their house!

It’s Halloween!  So sad October is over, where did the month go?? I’m mostly sad my warm Arizona sun is leaving me…wah!  But what comes with the fall is food, lots of yummy food, so there is a perk, right??  To kick off fall, I made this faux deer head pallet art, the first of my fall mantel.  I added a quick pom pom bunting as well to create a little festivity too!  Does this look like wood to you?? Did we trick you?? {TRICK or treat…it IS Halloween afterall…I crack myself up…} It’s FOAM!!  Fun, huh??  I had a few girls from church over last night and they all thought it was aged barnwood!  I love that we work with FloraCraft and accepted their challenge to make pallet art from foam, genius.  I have played with real pallet art, {remember my fox pallet art?-home is where the heart is pallet art?-state pallet art? I’m realizing we may need an intervention…} and it was nice not to have the bulk from the real stuff.  You’ll love it, read on for the full tutorial to make your own faux deer head pallet art (;

Gather your supplies.

• 2 1’x3′ foam sheets
• foam cutter
• smooth finish
• foam connectors + eyelets
• styrofoam glue *optional
• measuring tape
• Sharpie marker
• putty knife
• 3 acrylic paint colors
• decopauge
• bakers twine

Directions:

• Measure 4″ up from bottom of your foam.  I only made 4 cuts total so I ended up with 6 strips of foam.
• Trace a straight line down the foam so you can easily cut it in the next step.
• Cut your foam with the Styro Cutter tool. This is an awesome helper! It melts the foam for you, very little work!! I love love loved using it! Just follow your straight line, the tool does all the work. Note: If you don’t want to buy the tool, you can use their cutting tools shown above as well. It’ll take longer and you’ll use your muscles but it’ll will work just as well.

• I google image searched for a deer head I liked then used a Sharpie to copy it onto the foam. As you can see, I messed up a few times which is okay since you’ll be painting soon anyhow.

(Tip: Right click deer image, save, print then cut out to use as a stencil)

• Next, coat your strips of foam with a putty knife and a lot of the smooth finish.  Give yourself a couple hours for it to dry, this project literally took me the whole 6 hours my kids were at school to finish…in between laundry and mopping floors of course (; Make sure to coat the sides but don’t worry about the backside.
• Sand it down till it’s smooth. I used my mouse sander which did a beautiful job! Notice on the lower left corner (above) the difference between sanded and unsanded, you’ll definitely want to sand!

This is the fun part: painting!

• Paint your base coat chocolate brown, don’t worry about coating it 100%. Don’t forget the sides!
• Dry brush a layer of gray on top, using your rinsed out brown brush, after it’s dry of course.
• Using the same unrinsed gray brush, add some tan where you feel like it’s too dark or too much of one color.
• Using the same unrinsed brush again, add some of your original brown until you like the final look.
• Note:  This is fun and personal to your preference! Just keep going until you love the outcome (:

• After everything is dry, connect your foam pieces together using the connectors.
• Optional:  Using the Stryo glue, glue in between slats for added strength.
• Optinal: I also used greening pins to secure the backside since my kids may tug on it occasionally.  It’s ridiculously sturdy!
• Push the eyelets into the backside (or top) to hang easily using bakers twine!
• I added a quick pom pom bunting to mine using fall colors.  It’ll be fun to swap out colors for different holidays.

Are you getting the pallet art bug??  Check out more fun of them at Crafts n Coffee, plus even more inspiration at MakeItFunCrafts.com!  Check out all our DIY projects and fall/autumn decor too!

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