How to Make a Pallet Lantern With No Nails!

12 Materials
$20
2 Hours
Easy

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Using precut pallet wood from the craft store, we made a quick lantern for a battery powered candle. This uses simple tools and relies on hot construction adhesive glue sticks for the assembly. No nails or screws or fancy joinery are needed. Take a look at how this came together.

The easiest way to see this come together is by watching the video.


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For this project we were challenged to use a random box of stuff. We had to use seven of the crafting supplies, but we ended up using ten. See if you can spot what we used as we share the tutorial.

We started by making a top and bottom with four pieces of pallet wood which we cut so the final size would be a square. The pieces were hot glued to each other to form a panel for the top and one for the bottom. Here we are adding a little rope trim hot glued to the edge.

We added tacks for a little visual interest on each of the four sides of the lantern. The pieces are hot glued into place using hot glue construction adhesive. It holds this pallet wood very well. This is different from regular hot glue. Regular hot glue does not have the same holding power.

We put a glittery hot glue stick in our surebonder cordless mini detail hot glue gun to add a little bling to the top and bottom.

We made the handle with the bottom part of a metal stand. We cut off what we didn't need with a Dremel rotary tool that was fitted with a metal cut off wheel. The "handle" stay in place with a couple of latches screwed into the top. We painted all these metal parts with oil rubbed bronze.

The feet for the lantern are actually parts of a deconstructed wood puzzle that we painted with the oil rubbed bronze. These are attached with the construction adhesive hot glue.

Once the lantern was finished, we put together a simple folding screen. We use construction adhesive hot glue to make three panels consisting of four pieces of pallet wood each. We used DecoArt Chalky Finish in white to do a bit of whitewashing on both the folding screen and lantern.

Adding two hinges completed the screen.

We wrapped the screen in fairy lights and added a bit of greenery for this festive look. We took the gold bottom of the candle off and put it into a cardboard star for a more rustic look.

The bead like trim is made by filling a silicone bead mold with hot glue. Once it is cool and dried it is hot glued to the front of the lantern.

We used the silver glittery glue stick to make the bead trim. Here you can see I am gluing it into place.

All finished! A larger battery powered candle can be used in this as well.

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  2 questions
  • Heje Heje on Nov 18, 2019

    Is designed for indoor use only? What could be done to make it for outdoor use?

  • Miss Daisy Miss Daisy on Oct 19, 2020

    I have tried several times to glue things like wood to wood , wood to glass , etc. with no success. I have used Gorilla hot glue with the super glue and it still doesn't hold . What would you recommend ? I'm 65 , on a fixed income and love to do crafts of all types of things. I also quilt , sew , embroidery , crochet , plastic canvas , applique , bake , etc - love staying busy and creating. So I'm sure you can see my dilemma with this , I've spent over 60.00 on glue and guns with no success , money I couldn't afford to spend but did without other things - so aggervated.

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