When My Honey brought home a pile of pallets last week, Jo and I decided to try our hand at upcycling pallets into something new. We thought some rustic outdoor lanterns for Jo's new picnic table would be the perfect weekend pallet project.

We grabbed our hammers to take the boards apart, but after only a few minutes with no results, we knew that pallets were not meant to be undone, and those nails were not to be budged! We needed an easy way to take pallets apart fast.

Our project didn't need full length boards, so I reached for my circular saw, and just cut off each plank, right next to the cross piece where it was nailed in place.

Ten minutes later, we had a pile of pallet scraps that were perfect for our project! Wow, that was such an easy way to take pallets apart.

Then I used my mitre saw to cut the boards into shorter pieces to fit the lantern design we came up with. For each lantern, we needed four 13" x 3-3/4" boards for the sides, four 7-1/2" x 3-3/4" boards for the tops/bottoms, and two 3-3/4" x 3-3/4" squares for the decorative elements.

To assemble the tops and bottoms of the lanterns, Jo put the two 7-1/2" long boards next to each other and placed the decorative square in the middle, turned at an angle. Then she attached the pieces together with small finishing nails.

I flipped the bottom piece Jo made decorative-side-down, and attached the four sides. I placed one 13" board in each corner, turned 45 degrees, and attached them with one nail from the top down. (It's important to only use one nail here, because you want the sides to be able to twist later so you can squeeze the candle in!)

Then I flipped the whole thing over and attached the top in the same manner, but this time with the decorative side up. Remember to only use one nail in each one, so that you can twist them to make room to squeeze a candle inside.

We tucked some chunky candles inside and were amazed at our outdoor lanterns made from pallets! These would be the perfect table centerpiece for a rustic outdoor wedding, or for anyone looking to add a subtle, farmhouse touch to their patio.

But subtle is not what we were looking for that day. We wanted bright, colorful, and cheerful! We reached for a can of our favorite go-to spray paint, Rust-Oleum 2X Ultra Cover Gloss. And just like that, we had a bright purple lantern!

We made a whole rainbow of lanterns, including Apple Red, Real Orange, Sun Yellow, Meadow Green, Brilliant Blue, and Grape.

When the paint was dry, we just twisted one side panel to make the opening wider, tucked a candle inside, then twisted the side back again. Perfect!

This bright pop of rainbow colors is exactly what Jo's white picnic table needed, and we were thrilled with the final result.