An invitation to a socially distanced VE Day Street Party popped through our letterbox last week and it was just the reason I needed to create something big. For the last few weeks we’ve had a huge painted rainbow outside our house. We have a window full of rainbows but created a huuuuge rainbow especially for our neighbour who works for the London Ambulance Service. The rainbow isn’t going anywhere but I thought it would be fun to recycle a wooden pallet to make a union flag to display outside our house when we celebrate the anniversary of VE Day (and maybe VJ Day too!).

Recycled wooden pallet union flag

We love to create with recycled wooden pallets. They are easy to get hold of and pretty simple to upcycle into something else. My favourite wooden pallet upcycle has to be our handmade wooden kitchen but we’ve also made a wooden pallet planter and a sign for Halloween.

We already had a wooden pallet which we used to create a glow in the dark sign to welcome our Trick or Treaters at Halloween last year. I removed the wire and it’s been sitting in the garden ever since. If you wanted to make your own wooden pallet union flag, all you need is one wooden pallet, two if you can get them, as we used spare slats of wood to fill in any gaps in the other wooden pallet.

The only other thing I needed were three small tester pots of red, white and blue paint. The first thing I did was to paint the whole pallet with white paint to give a good, even cover for the other two colours. I also knew I only had the small tester pots, so didn’t want to run out half way through!

I wanted my wooden pallet union flag to look a little rustic so roughly measured out the central parts of the union flag and painted these red. Yes, that’s me using one of the children’s brushes!

Again, I roughly measured where I wanted the final parts of the Union flag and painted them blue. It has been really warm over the last few days so it didn’t take long for the paint to dry. I like the rustic, patchy look. Hopefully it makes it look vintage and weather-beaten. I’m looking forward to decorating our house with our other homemade decorations to celebrate VE Day this Friday.

Other ways to recycle a wooden pallet:

Easy upcycled wooden pallet Christmas tree

Upcycled wooden pallet planter

DIY upcycled pallet Halloween sign

Wooden pallet mud kitchen

How to make a bug hotel from a pallet