How To Make A Rustic Garden Tool Holder With Planter

It all started with a trip to the thrift store where I found adorable bronze watering can hooks. I was reminded of how last Summer I was constantly looking for my garden trowels and figured this would be a great way to corral them in one place. Once I got it home, one thing lead to another and soon I had a rustic garden tool holder with planter and I'm going to show you how easy it was to make.

How To Make A Rustic Garden Tool Holder With Planter

In this post, I'm also sharing how to create a galvanized metal patina with paint, how to age new wood, and how to transfer graphics onto wood with glossy paper.

We'll be turning these salvaged and thrift store finds...

...into this adorable garden tool holder, perfect for hanging on a garden shed or back yard fence.

I've included affiliate links in this post so you can find what products I used or recommend to make this garden tool holder. Please see my disclosure policy.

Pallet Wood Sign Assembly

To make the rustic wood sign for the garden hooks I used two battered pieces of pallet wood salvaged from the woodpile and joined them together with pocket holes every 12-inches using a Kreg Pocket Hole Jig as pictured below.

Aging The Pallet Wood

To give the wood sign more character I aged the pallet wood with my go-to aging solution made from items found in the kitchen. Press here to find the Wood Aging Solution Recipe and tutorial.

You can see the difference between the stained and unstained wood in the picture below. When it dries the nail holes, knots and any imperfections in the wood are highlighted which gives the sign that wonderful rustic look that I was going for.

How To Get The Look Of Galvanized Metal With Paint

The challenge was how to unify the patina on the metal watering cans with the galvanized metal bucket.

The first thing I did was brush a matte metallic silver paint that I had on hand over the entire surface.

After it dried I lightly burnished it with the same aging solution used on the wooden and wiped away the excess with a paper towel.

To get the look of white rust spots that are common on galvanized metal, I diluted wicker white acrylic craft paint with a couple drops of water and flicked the brush with my fingers to splatter the white spots.

After the white spots were dry I brushed Paris Grey (medium grey) chalk paint on all the raised bits and dry brushed (offloading paint onto a paper towel so very little paint remains on the brush) and swiped the brush over the metallic silver paint and a little on the galvanized bucket as well.

Once dry, I lightly sanded with #0000 steel wool to basically blend it all together.  It's not a perfect match to the mini bucket but pretty darn close. Wouldn't you agree that the watering cans look so much better galvanized?

Glossy Paper Image Transfer Technique

Back to the wood sign and creating cute Bloom Where You Are Planted graphics on the top.

First I created the graphic in PicMonkey and to enlarge it to fit the length of my board I created two mirrored images (reverse print). You can download each jpeg image here BLOOM and WHERE YOU ARE PLANTED.

I removed all the labels from a sheet of Avery address labels. Any paper with a glossy finish will work including taping wax paper (waxy side up) onto a sheet of bond paper. Print the graphics on the shiny side of whatever paper you use and print them (one-by-one) using an Inkjet Printer ONLY (this won't work on a laser printer).

Starting with the word BLOOM, I carefully placed the ink side of the sheet onto the wood and rubbed the back of a spoon over the sheet to lift the ink from the paper onto the wood.  I repeated this process for WHERE YOU and then ARE PLANTED.

Using an artist's brush and acrylic craft paint in the color Tomato Red, I painted over the word BLOOM. I added a shadow line using a black fine point Sharpie marker.

Assembling The Sign

Now it's time to attach the faux galvanized water can hook and wrought iron water spout onto the pallet wood using 1 1/2-inch brown screws. On the back of the sign, use two D-Ring hooks to hang it.

It's a little too early to be planting flowers here in Canada so I filled the galvanized bucket with faux pansies for now.

Hang the galvanized bucket onto the water spout hook and hang your small garden tools and you're ready to start planting. No more searching for those garden tools!

So what do you think?

If corraling your small garden tools is something you could use for your backyard and you plan on making a rustic garden tool holder, don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions. Either leave them in the comment section below or press the Contact Me button at the top of the blog to drop me an email. I love hearing from you!

Here's another gardening idea you may like for your home or garden shed door. Small house plant garden tools make this adorable Easy Spring Garden Lovers Wreath. For more Spring and Summer inspiration visit my Spring Project Page and/or Summer Project Page where I share everything from water features to whimsical garden decor ideas.

I share my projects at these inspiring link parties.