Barn Wood & Barbed Wire Flag Tutorial

June 20, 2014

It's hard to be a junker/repurposer when you have very limited storage space. See the pile of barn wood to the left of the white ironing board. That is a some scrap wood given to me by a good friend that makes signs. Since the 4th of July is only two weeks away, I decided to make a rustic flag with some of it.

My flag was made from five pieces of tongue and groove barn wood. It measures 15" from top to bottom and is 25" wide.

The back of my flag has three 1" x 4" braces up and down, and two across.

A rusty $2 vintage Folger's coffee can, and a piece of flat iron that was also $2, will be part of the flag's decoration.

Living in a very small town calls for improvising. There were no rusty metal stars like Tin-tiques at the craft shop!

I used one of the larger stars on the Plaid stencil to trace a star shape on the bottom of the rusty coffee can. I used a tin snips to cut it out.

Barbed wire stripes were added to my flag with heavy duty (long) staples pounded in with a hammer. Wear gloves! The barbed wire and the coffee can edges are sharp!

A Rustic Re-claimed Wood Flag www.organizedclutterqueen.blogspot.com

The flat iron was screwed onto the wood, and the star was glued on with E6000. My husband was skeptical, but the lady at the thrift shop told me the flat iron was something used in welding.

A Rustic Re-claimed Wood Flag In the Garden www.organizedclutterqueen.blogspot.com

Here's my completed flag displayed in one of my junk gardens.

If I learned anything from this project, it is wear a pair of heavy work gloves when working with barbed wire. If you want to hang this barn wood flag on a wall, you could add some sort of a hanger to the back, or maybe even a wire through holes at the top.