Making New wood look weathered

So y'all know how much I like to paint on found objects. 

I've recently tried to find things that are easier to replicate so I can produce my items quicker with out so much of a hunt. 

I've decided to look into making my own pallets. 

I've done this before with found wood that is BEAUTIFUL. 

But it also weighed a TON and could really only be placed on a mantel and couldn't be shipped. 

Here is an example of one of the older, natural weathered pallets. 

(I don't have images for the first few steps but once we get to the staining I have plenty!)

What Reed and I decided to do was buy a sheet of 1/4 pine plywood to cut in to the plank sizes we wanted. What we did next was beat the wood up a bit by sanding ALL of the edges.

You can distress the wood with anything you have laying around. We hit it with both sides of the hammer, an old chain, and even knocked a bag of nails around to get a few different marks. 

I wasn't home when Reed was doing this part and so later we decided it needs to be done a little different. Reed put all of our boards together using extra scrap pieces, nails, and wood glue on the back with wire for hanging. While this was super sweet of him to do he did his steps backwards. 

Next time we decided that we will mix the boards up a bit more so the grain doesn't match and sand them/distress them BEFORE we put the pallet together. 

Again, sorry for the lack of images, but here is what our pallet looks like with out stain. 

Now this is the fun part. 

Staining the wood is what really gives it that ages/weathered look that so many people love about old pallets. While you can't replicate it exactly with out leaving it outside for a few months I've tried to find the closest stain to that lovely blue grey. 

What we used is 

Minwax Ebony and Minwax Dark Walnut stain. 

Latex gloves to protect your hands

water

foam brushes

a shop rag. 

We tried 2 different techniques. 

Our first technique we damped the wood with the rag and water.
Then brushed on a coat of ebony stain wiping off shortly after it was applied.
Then we went back over with the Dark walnut again wiping down with a rag. 

 

this is a better depiction of what it looks like after being wiped down.

This is really beautiful but is a little warmer (more brown) than what we were hoping but it is still very pretty. You can see more variation up close.

So for our second pallet we tried a little different technique. And I even have a video to share!!

(Please excuse my 5 year old girl voice, my squintched face, and crazy hair)

For those of you who 1. couldn't undrstand me 2. didn't watch the video or 3. like seeing words better here is a quick description. 

It is very close to the same process as before just changing a few steps around. 

First you really soak the wood with water. I used my spong brush this time to make sure I had a good amount of water sitting/soaking in to the wood. 

I then would brush on a small amount of JUST the ebony stain. Kind of scrubbing it around to make sure it gets in to the distressed areas and the grain of the wood. 

Then just like before you wipe down your wood soaking up what is left sitting on top. 

You can do this as many times as you like depending on how dark you want your final pallet to be. 

This is one layer over every board, then going back over in a few spots to draw out some variation. 

Sorry I don't have a better picture of this one hanging up but it looks a lot more naturally weathered than the first! I'm going to be using this technique from now on!!

Hope this is interesting or helpful in some way!
We are both so excited to know how to age our own wood now!
If anybody is looking for a pallet painting let me know, I've got two ready to be painted on :)