A Vintage Holiday Crate Sleigh

I'm sharing how I turned a store bought crate into a vintage sleigh for the holidays!

When I was asked to join eight AMAZINGLY talented bloggers for the Holiday Crate x10 project, I was super excited(and nervous!) After all-our challenge was to transform this plain-store brought crate into something creative for the holidays!





Since I have boxes and boxes of holiday decorations, it was not only important to me to create something that I didn't already have, but would also be functional. That was easy! I've always wanted a vintage sleigh, but unfortunately those I loved were a bit too pricey for my budget. So, I did what any DIY'er does, and I made one!
My vision for the body of the sleigh was to have an aged look like this old piece of wood from a corn crib on our farm.





Materials needed for paint treatment:
White paint
Red paint
Brown paint
Antique Gray Paint
Black paint
Paint brushes
Old rags
Sandpaper
Hammer, nails, and screwdriver to distress wood





Once I had the paint treatment exactly how I wanted it-I used some stencils I had on hand, and put our families favorite toy maker's name on the side!
The next step was to build the runners for the sleigh. Initially, hubby was going to make them out of some metal he had in the garage, but then a little Christmas magic happened when we visited a local antique store for something entirely not related to the project!





Those runners were sitting in the front of the store, in all their rusty glory-just waiting
to be put on my sleigh! Once we loosed the rusty bolts on the runner- we attached some some wood pieces for added support and then attached those to the bottom of the crate.





Then it was time to decorate the sleigh for the holidays! First, I added some greenery-and topped it with a burlap bag filled with presents wrapped in pretty paper and tied with raffia. Next came a few ornaments, some frosted pine cones, and an adorable plaid reindeer. Lastly, I tied on a few sleigh bells..and VIOLA-I have the vintage sleigh I've always wanted!












Original article and pictures take http://www.hometalk.com/11469594/a-vintage-holiday-crate-sleigh site