How to Make Jewelry Organizer With a Pallet Shelf

When the winter doldrums come around, there's nothing better than a pop of colour to add some cheer!

We hate to waste. So when we had these left over scraps of peg board and pallet wood sitting around, we thought it would be ideal to show you how to paint the pegboard in a riot of colour and add pallet shelves onto it! Cool, right?

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• 1/4″ white Pegitz Pegboard Locks (or the size that corresponds to your pegboard holes)
• Pegboard (ours is a scrap around 12″ x 24″)
• Vintage ruler yard sticks (2)
• Acetate to make stencil
• Pallet, broken down and cut to length
• Brown paper for pattern
• Stencil (made from an acetate sheet)
• Sandpaper (we use this cheaper sandpaper for small touchups)
• Wood cleat or metal french cleat to hang
• Stencil brushes
• Dixie Belle Chalk Paint. We used 15 different colours (peony, the gulf, rusty nail, mermaid tail, pure ocean, daisy, dusty blue, flamingo, tea rose, dixie belle blue, florida orange, colonel mustard, honky tonk red, navy, green)
• Clear coat (satin is our preference)
• Mitre saw
• Painters tape
• Pencil
• Square
• Spring clamps
• Elmer’s Carpenter Glue
• 6″ shelf brackets

Because the pegboard is an offcut, and we want it to look good of course, we take the time to make a to-scale template of our design on a piece of brown paper so we can place it exactly! We keep a whole role of brown paper in my studio and use it for everything! It’s so handy. Once happy with that, lightly pencil in the design on the pegboard.

Find yourself a pattern you like; pinterest is a great resource for ideas.

When our printer ink ran out, I used my iPad to trace my stencil design onto paper (see how to trace on an iPad). As a complete aside, if your printer ever stops working completely, check out this post on how to clean printer heads.

I then positioned the pattern under a piece of acetate on top of a cutting mat. Cut the acetate with an X-acto knife. Hand cutting the stencil was actually faster than trying to figure out how to use my Cricut for the first time :).

After cutting the stencil(s) out of acetate, lightly trace the pattern onto the pegboard.

I pulled most of my chalk paints out of the cupboard. This project is ideal for using up any leftover paint because you need so little.

I didn't prime or paint the pegboard, (it was already white) but do so if your pegboard is brown so the rest of the colours pop on the background.

Each jar goes onto the 15 shapes in the pattern.

Once happy with the placement of the colours, take some tape and double number as you see in the 3rd picture above.

Cut the tape, placing one number of the corresponding space on the pegboard and the other on the jar.

Clear everything off the pegboard and we’re ready to stencil!

Tape your stencil to the pegboard with a few pieces of green painters tape to secure it to the pegboard.

Dip your stencil brush into the paint and offload it onto some paper towel so it's dry. Start in the centre of the stencil and pouch straight up and down to deposit the paint. Then come in from the edges, again with a straight up and down motion. Working with a dry brush and and up and down motion of the brush will ensure you don't get any paint bleed under the stencil.

Be sure to leave a gap between your shapes as you stencil so you don’t accidentally smudge anything.

Chalk paint dries so fast that you can fill in the rest of the spaces in no time!

I wanted to include orange so mixed the red and yellow you see in the last picture above. Orange is so under-utilized and I love it! Anyone with me on that?

If you look at the pictures closely, you'll notice that the colours aren’t even ‘solid’. That’s because I only stencilled one coat of paint onto each. If you prefer, you can stencil two or three light coats of paint, but I like the look of some of the white showing through for this colourful project.

Now, onto the frame! we’re using vintage rulers from our collection to frame around the pegboard. If your rulers are plain, you can add a translucent stain if you wish. We were lucky to find these colourful yard sticks.

Some chop saws have a laser line, but ours isn't new. On our chop saw it’s difficult to see the mark. So use a square to extend the cut line. We’re cutting ours 24″ long and then we measure the gap in between for the horizontal piece.

Due to the pegboard scrap not being cut evenly (i.e. one side is cut through the middle of the holes), we cheated the placement of the rulers on the sides to cover the half-holes. So the ruler is only actually only covering a portion of the board on the two long edges.

Glue and clamp the rulers and leave them to dry. I’m using Elmer’s ProBond Max. Spring clamps are great for holding the rulers as they dry.

Once the glue is dry, clear coat the entire project. Then add a wood cleat on the back of the pegboard and one on the wall to hang it.

A wood cleat should be used to hang this project. A wood cleat is simply a piece of wood cut on an 45 degree angle so it becomes two pieces of wood that lock together seamlessly. It’s handy to have a table saw for this. If you don’t have a table saw, you can also use a metal french cleat and mount it onto a piece of wood to provide clearance behind the pegboard for the pegs.

When you mount one half to the wall, and the other to your pegboard, the angles fit together and hold your project on the wall. The advantage is that you can screw the wood right into the wall studs, giving you the most secure weight load!

We're adding a pallet shelf onto the pegboard. First, break down the pallet with a crowbar.

Sand smooth to avoid splinters.

Our pieces are the width of the pegboard, but you can cut them any size you desire.

Using a square to mark, cut to desired length. Luckily we cut these pallet pieces last summer. It’s way too cold now for extensive cutting!

My original plan was to add a paint stick onto the front to cap each shelf so I cut those the same length as the shelves. You’ll see we skipped the paint stick for this project, but feel free to add if you have items you don’t want to roll off your pallet shelf.

We also originally planned for two or three shelves, but out pegboard was small so we'll save the other for another project.

We chose to use pegboard shelf brackets that you insert like any other peg hook to hang our shelf (first and last picture).

However, I realized we only had one set of these 6″ peg board shelf brackets. So it’s one shelf for now! Just slot the shelf brackets onto the pegboard where you want your shelf to sit and place your shelf on top. If you’re worried about the pallet shelf falling off, add some cable staples on the underside to fasten the prongs to the wood. These are 6″ deep to accommodate the depth of the pallet wood.

Because you want the shelf to be secure, we suggest that you lock these shelf brackets in place with Pegitz Pegboard Locks. They’ll keep the brackets from falling out accidentally (we used them on both our how to hang sliding pegboard and pegboard craft organizer projects). 

There are a variety of other ways to hang this pallet shelves DIY. If you have 3/4″ wood, try using L hooks, like this video demonstrates.

For lightweight items, you can also try the keyhole hangers shown in the last picture. Just screw them onto the back of the pallet shelf. Then attach them to the pegboard with a round head screw and nut that you attach from the back.

Once the shelves are in place, you can attach a cleat onto the back of the pegboard and a corresponding one onto the wall and hang it up!

This pegboard design would be great in an office or craft room; you could organize almost anything on it. However, this one is going in the bedroom to display some of my favourite jewelry. But we won’t be hanging this until we make some updates to our bedroom. Once we get past finding my sister a new house and helping her move in the Spring, I’d love to turn our attention to updates in our own house :).

Don’t you just love how the vintage rulers look as a frame around our colourful ‘thought bubbles’?

Pallet wood shelves can look stunning with a clear coat! It really brings out the grain.

Around here, we love to think up creative ways to use pallets, like this wooden wall art diy, pallet diy, muskoka chair challenge, and even this paint stick pallet.

You’ll find more pegboard ideas and jewelry display ideas here. If you like to learn new skills, don’t forget to get your craft mojo on at Birdz of a Feather and subscribe! You can also follow us on Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.