Street Merch Monday: Not Just a Shipping Palette

West Elm is one of my favorite stores. They have a rustic and refined, traditional yet modern aesthetic like no other. I spun through the other day with my parents and noticed a common motif: Their use of shipping palettes.

It's no secret that I love to repurpose furniture, home goods, fabric, etc., so you know I'm loving the clever use of these normally junk pieces of wooden street merch.

My take away? 3 ways to use shipping palettes, as previously done by West Elm:

1. Use a palette to hang planters and other outdoor accessories from.



2. Use palettes as urban/country chandeliers by hanging lanterns, lights and glass ornaments from them.



3. Use palettes as an entire textured wall covering. Then hang your normal wall stuff on top of it. Love this idea!


A while back, I had the opportunity to try using palettes in an interior setting! I found these 2 palettes on the side of the street. They are all over Manhattan, just left on the curb. I try to look for palettes with wood in good shape and blemish free. But then again, some of the ink and marks on the wood often add character.

Our plan: To hang the palettes on a wall, to construct simple 'flower boxes' to hang on the palettes and to paint them.

Here they are before:


Here they are after! A handyman friend of mine, Andrew, crafted the 'flower box' pieces that hung off the side of the palettes with the help of simple brackets. We then painted the pieces gray and white to help clean up their look.


And here they are in the space. We filled the 'flower boxes' with mason jars of flowers and left over wood branches.

Who knew shipping palettes could be so versatile. I'm excited to try them out in other ways!