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When it came time for this month’s DIY blog hop with a theme of “make something from scrap wood” my mind started to wander of all the possibilities. But with Halloween decor on my mind and already thinking about wanting to add more Halloween type decor to the outside of our home I decided a skeleton would be fun to create! If you are anything like me and you enjoy DIY home projects then you probably have scrap wood pieces lying around that you saved thinking they would come in handy. This project is super easy and affordable to put together and can be changed based on what you have on hand.

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Materials Needed for Scrap Wood Outdoor Skeletons

• Scrap wood pieces in various sizes
• Jigsaw
• Compound Miter Saw
• Brad nailer (or hammer and nails or wood glue)
• Outdoor white paint or spray paint
• Outdoor black paint
• Paint sprayer, if you chose to use one-this one is my favorite

I went into this project not having a specific pattern so I got out a small piece of paper and sketched out what I wanted my skeleton to look like. I have to say it looks pretty good!

this …

I headed out to our shop and barn to look at all our multiple wood scrap piles to see what I could find. I found a half sheet of plywood to cut out the face and various other pieces of trim pieces that I figured would work great for the spine, arms, legs, hands, feet and ribs.

To start I chose to work on the face, I decided to freehand the face myself but you could definitely find an image from Google to print out and trace onto the wood if you wanted.

Once I had the face cut out with the jigsaw I found a trim piece that was long enough to cut a “V” at the bottom so that it could easily go into the ground. I used this as my base to start playing around with the other scrap pieces for the arms, legs, ribs, and hips.

The majority of the scrap wood pieces I found that I liked ended up being trim pieces so we decided to go with this for the rest of the body. Justin was helping me with the cutting and measurements. And as we started laying all the pieces out his opinion was that hands and feet were not needed and I agreed as the scrap wood blocks I found just didn’t seem to fit right with the rest of the skeleton. Instead of just using a square board for the hips we made it look like a bowtie since the square board by itself just didn’t make it look like hips.

Once everything was cut out I arranged it all on the floor of the shop so that I could visualize what it would look like before we started nailing. We used a brad nailer to attach all the pieces. If you don’t have a brad nailer you could use a hammer and nails or even just use wood glue.

Now comes time to paint!

I used leftover outdoor white paint that we have had from previous projects but my favorite paint sprayer but you could also use spray paint or just use a brush to paint it.

I ended up applying 2 coats of white paint and once this was dry I used some black to paint on a face and this completed the skeleton! I think I might end up make another so that there can be 2 in the yard to display for Halloween!

Check out all the other scrap wood projects from my friends:

• Decor Display Riser-Kippi at Home
• DIY Fall Sign-Southern Yankee DIY
• DIY Corner Shelf-The DIY Nuts
• DIY Rustic Centerpiece Box-Mama Dares to DIY
• Scrap Wood & Resin Charcuterie Board-Olivia Ohern

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