Remember Dufus? No? Click here. Well, he broke an IKEA KRABB mirror.
C(K)raap(bb) maan!
So, it sat in several closets for a really long time while I kept thinking about what to do with it. Finally I came across this amazing artist's work. Paul Bozzo makes awesome textured paintings and you can see his work here: http://bozzoart.blogspot.com/. His work inspired me to create this with one half of the broken mirror.
I glued the mirror onto a 1/2" thick piece of plywood.
I played with the positioning of the mirror until I was happy.
The textured painting part was created using the techniques used by Paul Bozzo.
Poli Saamiyaar, however, decided that he would have to sign this piece and claim it as his!!!
On my recent trip to India I collected some seeds called manjaadi kaai. Here is a link to some info on it. Well, strictly speaking, I did not collect it, I just picked up my mother's collection. These little coral like seeds, drop to the ground as the seed pods mature. I was meaning to make some jewelry from it, initially, but then I decided that rather than store it away somewhere until I am ready to make something out of it, I would rather display it:
The flower like woody things sitting inside this glass jar are actually seed pods that my mother also collected for me. The tree sheds these massive seed pods during the rainy season. Now, no one is able to tell me the name of this tree from which such magnificent seed pods arise, so I will have to keep searching until I find it. These pods occur in a bunch, almost like a flower. Each pod is about 4 to 5 inches long and three inches wide.
Once I put it up in the vase, I realized that I wanted some more luster on the pods. Not exactly color it, but, you know, to just add a little punch.
So, I experimented with several things. Here is what it looked like with Martha Stewart's metallic paints. I believe the shade was called copper. It was a bit much for me.
Next, I tried some nail polish on it. Yes, I know! :)
I tried four colors on that pod. The silvery color is actually Martha Stewarts titanium. I thought I might try the titanium thing on an entire pod and see how I liked it.
I kinda liked it, but still... just wasn't able to commit to it. I thought I might paint the rim of the pods this color.
So the search continued on.
I decided to try the patio paint I had bought for another project, where I made a planter from some patio blocks. I never did paint the planters, so I had lots on hand. This is how it looked.
Now, this I liked a lot. It looked just like nature intended, only dressed up a little to party!
Now that the outside of the pods were all painted, I thought, may be some color on the inside -- something to "pop" would look even nicer. So I tried another shade of nail polish.
Meh... wasn't that exciting. So, I tried some red glitter glue.
I kinda liked how it looked, but I thought too much of this may just be too overwhelming. Also, it might have a very Christmasy look and I was kind of going for an all year thing.
So, in the end, this is where I am at. I still don't know if I want the silver on the rim and what I want to do with the interior. What do you think?
Does the inside look too bare? Should it be dressed up?
So what do I do?
With a chimney top that flew
Right off the roof?
First, I suggest you replace that chimney top! Phew!
Now that you have taken care of business, let's see what we can do with that old chimney top, shall we?
First: stare at your chimney top for a bit:
From all angles!
Wow! Isn't that rust soo beautiful? If only I could "fix" it and then simply hang it from something. Something very heavy and sturdy.
I could do that, but I was too hungry to do anything heavy.
So...
I could pad up the sides with cardboard from old packing boxes
Then dig up some soil from the yard. In may case, it was Earthworm Central and I couldn't insert the trowel without catching a good number. Here is one of them that did not want to quit! And he was the thinner ones too!
Now, to find a plant. Not hard. Several of my plants have not yet made it to their permanent homes, thanks to my unparalleled procrastination skills.
This guy, in a pot too small for him, is one example:
Every bend in the plant corresponds to when it got too hot and I neglected to water it!
And here is the "chimney pot" after I watered the poor thirsty plant! It would look lovely sitting on something concrete, but I am too tired now to haul it up to the front yard and set it up all pretty!
All the deluge we have had in the month of August, coupled with the fact that we had been putting off fixing our gutters and downspout could lead only to one thing. And it did -- a watery basement. This forced us putter-off-er of things to actually get down and dirty and de-clutter the basement (well almost completely) and fix the gutters. Needless to say the de-cluttering part was not necessarily pretty stuff. But, in rummaging through the dusty, musty, cobwebby innards of the basement, I did find something interesting.
Aha! Another dish antenna
Naturally, I decided to put this to good use as well and build another dish antenna bird bath. But this one is a bit different from the previous one, in that it has no holes on the side. So, this will have to be fixed onto a rod or something of the kind.
Anyway, I decided to remove the arm of the dish antenna.
underside of the dish antenna
After the arm was removed
Now it's able to sit level -- almost level
I don't plan on just painting this and calling it quits. I am planning on sitting this on a log on the ground. Like this:
Log stand for the dish antenna
Sawing bits of the log off, or burying it unevenly should make the dish level with the horizontal. Only thing remaining is to make it heavy enough so it wont fly off in the wind. I am planning on mosaicking the dish to add weight and some interest.
A few years ago, during a bad thunderstorm, our Dufus broke my umbrella stand. I patched it up several times and he broke it once more than several times. Finally, I put it out on the deck in the hopes of working on it someday. I think it's day is finally here. I will be using this broken umbrella stand as a source for the tiles.
Considering that it has managed to stand the outdoors for this many years, it should be ok to be used as tiles for my birdbath.
Several years ago, the dish antenna guy replaced our antenna and was about to discard the old dish. DH, knowing fully well how I like to re-use almost everything, decided to save it for me. I turned it into a bird-bath. Really doesn't take much time at all:
What you need:
1. 1 Dish, of the antenna kind!
2. 1 can of paint of your favorite color. I picked yellow, because I wanted the birds to be attracted to this thing.
3. 36 2" binder rings.
4. soap and water and a sand paper.
5. Some sturdy rope.
Method:
Remove the "arm" of the dish antenna by removing the nuts attaching it to the dish.
Discarded arm of dish antenna
Put back the nuts, so that there are no holes in the dish.
Scrub the dish clean with soap and water.
Sand it down a bit and let it dry.
Spray paint and wait for it to dry.
Make four chains using eight binder rings each by interlocking them.
interlocked binder ring chains
Look for the holes on the side of the dish antenna -- there are four of them.
Attach one binder ring chain to each of these, by hooking it through these holes.
Join the four chains together with the remainder (4 of them) binder rings so that it looks like the pics below.
you can see the nuts that held the arm of the dish in this pic
Now all you need is a sturdy rope or chain to hook through the top-most link in the chain and then hang it using that on a sturdy tree limb.
You can also make rain chains using the same interlocking binder ring method and hang it from the tree limb to direct more water into the bath.
Alternately, you could dig a hole and stick a wooden post in it, then attach a sturdy plant hook to the top of the post and hang this thing from that.
Or, you could simply find a log and put the painted dish on top of it. You may have to screw it down into the log so that it does not fly away in bad weather.
Keep it near a bird feeder and you should have some traffic.
