Crafty bits

I admit, I'm a little wedding-obsessed. Instead of focusing in on the dress though, I'm all about the decor. I'm also a little too cheap to pony-up and by the schmancy pre-made stuff. So, in a fit of madness and mostly boredom, I started in on way too many projects. One of which has great results, but is taking forever. I am not a patient person, so it's slow going on this right now. I also kinda suck at taking photos of the whole process...my bad.

Materials:
Fine grit sandpaper
Container (Glass votive, old drinking cup, etc)
Sticks of varying length & width
Glue gun & several glue sticks
Branch snippers


Start with a container. In this case, I'm using a cheapy paint can. It was used as a flower pot in a previous life...

Grab some fine grit sand paper and give your container a once-over with it. If using glass, skip this step. Whatever you use, make sure you give it a good wash & thorough dry before hand.

Warm up the glue gun! I like to use sticks about an inch longer than the container itself. Make sure the bottom of your sticks are cut level with the ground, then go wild! I'm using dried branches from the sunflower jungle I finally cut down. 

Grab a stick, then look at where the stick meets the container, and put a dab of glue on the top & bottom of the container to secure. When placing the following sticks, put dabs of glue along the sides as well as the top & bottom. Hold in place until fairly secure and move on. 

It should like zis.

There comes a time when you may find yourself with a gap, like so.

Grab a wonky little bit of branch, and snip the top at an angle to match up with the gap.

Glue in place, like zis. 

Then cut to length, like zis!

You may notice the sticks tend to lean after awhile. You can fix this by going around and gluing them straight up and filling the gaps in later, like above, or just go with it. 

Which is what I did below...

Did I mention I was bored, and a little crazy? Yup.

Continue until it's covered all around with those larger sticks, then go back over it and fill in the gaps with the smaller bits left over from trimming. If you have a lot of stringy bits left over from the glue, take a hair dryer set on "high" for a quick blast to melt 'em away.

Yep, it's a little tedious if you're a fan of quick results. But, the results are pretty killer. So far I've stuck-it to a tea light holder, plastic nursery pot, and a little olive jar. I'm pretty stoked on how these are turning out, especially the plastic nursery pots! Our recycling center doesn't accept the recyclable pots (uhm, cuz that makes sense), so I have an ever growing collection if these babies just hanging out. The vague plan in my head is to eventually cover all those babies, and have a prettified stash of container we can use for the wedding and beyond. 

On garden beds & poppies

 Have I mentioned how much I adore R? Cuz, like, he's amazink. So wonderful, in fact, that I substitute letters in words for emphasis. A-maz-ink. This time, he built me something I've lusted after for quite some time. A garden bed. Insert squeals of joy -here-

He didn't just build me one. I haz TWO. After the first one was built, we decided it looked lonely (okay, I decided it looked lonely).  He made my garden bed a buddy. So, now, I haz TWO. Again, with the awkward spelling. Anwho, I was so giddy with my first bed that I forgot to take photos. The second time around, I did better. I stalked the man around with a camera. There was plenty of grumbling on his part, and I promised to post no face shots if he let me ask silly questions and bother him when writing the tutorial.

Once it's all together the beds are 4' long x 4' wide. All the wood is untreated cedar- rot & weather resistant, repels insects to some extent, and is pretty durable. Since we'll be moving around a bit, I wanted something we could easily take apart, and a size that could fit into a variety of back yards. We also decided to place the beds against the back fence, to prevent neighbor dogs from digging under fence boards, and our dogs charging the gaping holes.  It took several trips to two different home-improvement stores to get the right materials. One had everything we needed, but their saw couldn't cut through the posts. The other didn't carry the cedar boards, but, they had a large enough saw to cut posts. Oy.

We had all the wood cut before buying. It was loads easier to transport, and cleaner than what we would have done at home with a hand saw. Also,the cuts were free. So there's that...
The downside is that they do rough cuts only, so the boards weren't perfectly aligned for assembly. We didn't mind much (just kind of matched up boards as it went along), but if you're a stickler for perfection you'll probably cut the boards at home with a schmancy saw.
 Now, for the good stuff. To the list!

Materials

Hardware:

We settled on screws specifically for wood applications, one box of 3 1/2" screws for the long ways, and on box of  2 1/2"  for the short ways. You'll have plenty of screws leftover if ya buy a box. Also, each box comes with a drill bit.  These Deck Mate screws were on sale for about $6 each. Scwhing.

Wood:

Untreated cedar. On the left we have the rough cut boards, on the right, our posts. Boards were 8' sections of  2 x 6's cut in half. The posts are sections of  2 x 4.  Probably started with a 12' hunk and cut it down to however tall we needed it (17" in this case, which gives you loads extra room). There was lots of arguing discussion about what size of wood we needed. The man likes to overbuild. 

Other junk:

                                                                  Sexy cordless drill.

                              Tape measure, assortment of drill bits, and a few of the 2 1/2" screws ready to go. 

Make it so:

 Grab two posts and one board, like zis: 

Mark where ya want your holes - ours went in about 2" from the side and 1" from the top. Drill pilot holes for the 2 1/2 " screws, then apply ze hardware! Here's what the first should look like: 

Clear as mud? Excellent. Now, repeat until you have both ends of one board screwed into two posts.Then, do it again, til you have one section that looks like this:

Once ya have that finished, make another. 

Go ahead, I'll wait here. I have coffee..... 

Let's put the sides on, shall we? Don't forget to offset the position of the screws. This time around, we're using 3 1/2" screws. 

First board placed, it should look like this: 

 Easy, no? 

                                     Now, just go on and screw in the remaining boards, like dis:

At some point, it was set on it's side to screw in the last board. Why? I dunno. Just felt like showing the photo. 

Once you're done, you'll notice the posts stick out. That's on purpose, really. 

Take that sexy new bed out into the garden, whereabouts you wanna put it. Grab your shovel. 

See those legs? Yeah, they're going in the ground. Mark the area around those posts, and dig baby. Dig. 

And he did. :) 

                               Isn't it gorgeous? For the purposes of blocking invasive neighbor pooches, the back
                              end is a little higher. S'okay. Bust out your level, and tweak to even it on up. Fill in the
                                         holes, and voila! You haz a garden bed, too. Easy, right?

Aw, aren't they cute?  We filled the second bed with hay and the entire contents of our compost bin, mixed, and dumped in three bags of organic soil. Gorgeous. 

That greenish thing in the middle? Potato tower. The bed to the left has five tomatoes, two peppers (Ancho and jalapeño), yellow straight neck squash, garlic, scallions, two types of basil, oregano, and rosemary. Oh, and some marigolds planted around there to attract hover flies.

The second bed  has Alaska peas, zucchini, loads of Texas sweet onions, eggplant, watermelon and dill. I'll probably tuck in some marigold seeds here, once planty goodness establishes a bit more. 

Yeah, I'm rockin' the veggie mojo right now. 

Oh, and one more thing: 

Oriental poppies. Marvelous. 

Moroccan Table #1

As promised, here's a peek into one finished project: The Morocco inspired nesting table. I still have two more to complete, but those are keeping houseplants away from nosey dog snouts for now.

I started with a vague idea, and three cheapy nesting tables via Craigslist ($10 baby!), A little dirty, mostly scuffed, and under a charmingly thick layer of oily cleaners & veneer. After an inordinate about of time sifting through old art class handouts and the mounting collection of Moroccan inspired images I've collected, I finally came up with a design that I could reproduce.

A few hours at the light table, several sheets of paper, and a few choice words for the endless stream of broken pencil tips produced this:

Then came time to sand down the table (by hand, mind you. No fancy-pants tools for this girl). It would have been shorter on time, and easier on my knuckles if I had any sort of electric sander handy...probably why I'm still procrastinating with the other two tables.


So, a good thorough sanding leads to an equally thorough wiping down with a tack cloth, then transferring the design from paper to the wood itself. I taped the original design to a sheet of contact paper, and sliced away.  I'm sure there's an easier way to do this. Like ordering a stencil (which, in hind sight, would have also been much easier on my hands, but, hey, I learn the hard way). I, being the stubborn lady I am, decided to use an exacto knife to cut out the pattern. Pre-made stencils, people...they are your friend.

Once my home-made stencil was complete, I laid it out over the nekkid wood, and went to town with gold paint pen. After the base design was down, I decided a border would be nice, so the edges of the table were attacked with masking tape. I have no idea what size, it just seemed to work.

Then comes the really fun (messy) part-painting! While at the local Home Depot , I wandered off and  fell in love with a Behr color chip by the name of "Berry Charm." Of course, I had no idea what it would be used for, so I bought a color sample to add to my growing collection of "stuff I love but have no current use for."
Fast forward to the table. It was perfect. The gold, the rich violet. Very luxurious, very Morocco. 

 

Once that Berry Charm worked it's magic, I simply couldn't help myself. The mini paint roller took control, and attacked the rest of the table. Legs, sides, it was all fair game. The hardest part of the painting session was keeping the dog fluff to a minimum  between coats. I'd venture a guess and say I put two on there, plus loads of touch-ups where clumsy fingers , noses, and a giant husky-butt got too close to wet paint. In the meantime, some turquoise was put down on the top of my table. I would love to tell you the name color and brand of this gorgeous paint, but the bottle is so old and abused, I could barely read "Acrylic" on the front. It's a craft paint of some sort, if that helps?

I decided that a defined border was called for, so out comes the masking tape again, strips put down on either side of where I wanted the border to be. It took about three passes with my gold paint pen this time around, mostly because I kept finding little gaps and bumps that needed fixing. The final step was to haul this baby outside and descend upon it with a bottle of clear indoor/outdoor spray paint (thank you, Krylon, for making that part a breeze).

It took about three days of working off & on to finish this sucker. Some things I will probably change when I go to work on the next two tables:

• Use an electric sander: I wasted a lot of time, energy, and skin trying to sand this down by hand. Though we don't have one right now, I can wait until we do. Getting more power tools was something we both wanted to do, anyway.

• Stencils: While I kind of dig the irregularities in the pattern, it will be a huge sanity saver to just find, or order a custom stencil to get the pattern down.If I can score a reusable stencil, all the better.

• Cleaner work place: I love my dogs, I really really do. I just don't love how much they contribute to the painting projects (and dinner) with all that fur floating around our house. If I could find a dog-free zone to finish this up, I would. While the random strands of paint-locked hair are homey, it's not quite what I was hoping for. Having to chase down a beast before she sits because she got her hind-end too close to wet paint, really puts a cramp in the flow of things too.

Originally intended for the back porch, the table is making an appearance as my nightstand for awhile. At least until I can drag my butt outside long enough to clean up the porch area.
So, whaddya think? Can I keep my "crafty" member card for awhile?