things to make after a storm

A couple of weeks ago here in the PNW, the clouds opened up and dumped eight to ten inches of snow on us, for the second time this season. It's simply unheard of in our area to get that amount of snow, and especially to have it last for more than a couple of days.

By midwest standards, I know this is laughable; I think most of us were in on the joke until an ice storm followed the heavy snowfall and started breaking stuff. Branches, limbs, and whole trees fell. Houses and cars were crushed. Streets were closed down. Pipes cracked or burst. Power was out in some areas here for several days. And even so, I know it never got as bad here as it did in, say, Slovenia the same week.

Still, though the temperatures have risen to the mid-50s this past week and we've returned to a rainy winter instead of a snowy one, signs of the storm remain. There are the lingering piles of snow in parking lots plowed in the wake of the storm. There are the rivers and lakes swollen and brown like coffee-with-milk. And there are, everywhere, still fallen branches and limbs and trees that Public Works crews and private tree services haven't gotten to yet. If I called it backlog, would the pun be out of place?

Anyway, I've collected here for you, readers, who may be similarly living in areas where trees have become sidewalk hurdles, a list of things to make and do with fallen timber. There should be no shortage of it for some of us for awhile to come.

* Log Stump Side Tables:
Oh Lovely Day
Ruffles and Truffles
Etsy - Sosikian Furniture

* Log Stump Stools:
Remodelista
Martha Stewart
Shelterness

* Branch Clothing Rack:
Convoluted State of Mind
The Art of Simple
Sugar and Cloth

* Branch Buttons:
Shrimp Salad Circus
Design*Sponge
Etsy - The Hickory Tree

* Tree Branch and Twig Trellises and Arbors:
Tara Dillard
Better Homes and Gardens
Vegetable Gardener

* Doll Furniture
One Inch World
Apartment Therapy
An Every Day Story

* Building Blocks
I Can Teach My Child
Everyday Art
Natural Pod.com

p.s. you can make any of these photos larger by clicking, but maybe you knew that already?

freezer paper stencil viking shirt

I had a falling out with the owner of a local shop recently. I'd gone there to buy a specific t-shirt for my kiddo, one with a cuuuute viking pattern screen printed on it by a company I like, but can't always buy (because good sense dictates I can't spend $30 on a toddler t-shirt on a regular basis).

But I left without it.

It's all too bad because I like to support local business when I can (even if it means waiting for a sale) and I especially like to support mama-owned businesses. More than that, I like to support good graphic designers, and this particular clothing manufacturer hires great ones.

In the end, though, the idea of stenciling a viking design onto a t-shirt isn't copyrighted. In fact, this tutorial that Cheri wrote over a year ago could have inspired the (more recent) designer t-shirt, for all I know. I know it inspired me!

Freezer paper stenciling is something I've posted about before, but this viking design is a whole lot less complex. As you can see, I made it in two different sizes, one for the mister and one for the kiddo.

I also (word to the wise) accidentally cut it into wax paper the first go-around (which DOES NOT WORK) and had to re-do it, so it's a good thing it's so straight-forward.

Cheri mentions in her tutorial that you can find some free-use images on-line and cut them with your Silhouette cutter; you'll be happy to know you can also free-hand the drawing and cut it out with a craft knife if, like me, you're artsy and don't own a Silhouette.

Cut on FREEZER paper, iron onto t-shirt (plastic side down), paint, and let dry.

If your beard is too close to the color of your shirt, lighten it up, dry again, and remove the wax paper.

Heat set, and you're ready to go!

I used a Gap t-shirt from the Goodwill for this design, so the project was really inexpensive and fast. And we like it! I hope you'll link to your freezer paper stencil projects in the comments section below, if you have the urge!

Happy New Year, and thanks for reading!

thrift store finds: the ones that got away

Contrary to popular belief, I do not, in fact, take home every cool thing I find at thrift and re-sale stores. Sometimes I limit myself to just taking photos of things I like. So here's a little photo dump of some of the things I've loved and left.

This leather folding chair must've been one of the coolest chairs I've seen lately. I don't really need more chairs in my life (our house is still the same size it's always been), but the kiddo and I visited it about a half dozen times before someone else bought it off the sales floor and saved me from myself.

Big industrial mixer-thingy? Really cool looking. No use for it in the world.

Big honkin' antique piano with little doors that slide open to show the hammers? It was almost ours. It should have been ours. If there'd been some way to get it home, it would have been ours. It was only $50.

There was a whole set of these dictionary/encyclopedias one day at the Village; I loved the hand-marbled end papers, and if the books hadn't been so musty, large, pricey, and only sensical as a set, I might have trucked them home. Instead, I just photographed the paper, and just like that, I saved $150 and a ton of shelf space in my house. I might turn the pattern into a fabric design or something.

I don't even know what this is. My left brain says, "air conditioning condenser", but I don't know where my left brain is pulling that from. My right brain says "pretty copper tubing! Maybe it could be a sculpture or something!" But my right brain is (face it) a little crazy sometimes, and my left brain smacked her hand away.

Modern Science Problems is a handsome book. I didn't get past the cover because it was super-musty smelling, and I don't like to introduce mustiness into my book collection. But the illustrations on the cover promised more inside. St. Vinnie's has such great book selections.

I like the idea of this 1970s kitchen measurements/equivalents chart (spotted at Goodwill), but the typography layout didn't do it for me, and I couldn't see past the glaring spelling error. It made me wonder if the measurements would be off, too. Still, I like the idea of a kitchen chart for measurements, and I hope to work up something similar in the near future.

Inexplicably, this elf's house cookie jar (with a sign reading "Cookie Club" above the door) was in a summer window display at the Assistance League charity shop, along with wet suits, boogie boards, and sandcastle molds. 'Round these parts, the cookie club meets all year. Super cute cookie jar. Doesn't go with anything we own, except the gnome seatbelt covers I made for the kiddo's car seat. And we already have a cookie jar.

I thought these hand-stitched chair seats were pretty nifty, but again, we don't need chairs and again, they're not really our style, so I photographed them and moved on. Not five minutes later, the kiddo and I saw a couple of dudes rolling them past in a shopping cart, so they found a happy home almost immediately.

More chairs. I loved the super-tall backs on these and the old leather seats. I clearly have a chair problem.

1950s nightstand in terrible shape. I liked the lines, though, and imagined it all refinished and shiny. I could be really beautiful. But the projects are piling up around here as it is. I mean, aside from the fact that there's no room in our bedroom for a nightstand. It's not the right time, little nightstand, but someday, maybe. Stay alive. I will find you.

Metal cabinet with a fancy latch. No use for it, really, but that doesn't mean I didn't think it over. Flammable liquid storage, maybe? I don't know. Something.

These pretty lucite boxes would make awesome art storage. I had all five of these piled into my cart one day at Bring, but they weren't priced, as far as I could tell. If you'll look closely at right-side hinge on the second case from the bottom, you might make out the number "10". As in $10 each. Because these are special, "lab-quality plastic" donated from the semi-conductor plant that closed. I have no lab use for these, so I can't justify $10 per box, but maybe someone else can! They had dozens of them in stock.

More chairs! I know. I'm seeking help. Fact is, two blogs I regularly visit had featured egg-shaped 1970s wicker chairs (here and here) recently; they're coming back into style. I went back to get one (for the backyard, maybe?) after spending the afternoon thinking it over, and both were sold. At $12.50 apiece, I knew they wouldn't last.

I don't collect Pyrex, but I know a lot of people do. I considered buying it for my Etsy vintage shop. This peachy one was sweet, but honestly, glass and dishware don't sell particularly well in my shop, so I passed on this until I clear a couple more items from my inventory.

Blue portable record player. Love it. No personal use for it. A little too pricey to ship. So it stayed on the shelf for another 24-hours (tops), until someone whisked it away to a new home.

If I didn't already have too many glass vases, this elegant glass globe would have hopped into my cart. But I do have too many glass vases, so it stayed at the Village.

1970s electric organ. I thought it was cute and it reminded me of the one our neighbors had when we were kids. But I'm holding out for a real piano. I still regret not snapping up the one I showed you earlier, and having this would in no way make up for it.

Finally, these. These huge, light-up letters from an old Pepsi-Cola bottling company sign. There are two "P"s in Pepsi. There was one in a (claimed) shopping cart at the front of the store, along with the "s" (the "a" was already gone). If I'd been there awhile earlier, I could have found the first letter of each of our names. As it was, the only three left weren't useful; once again, saved by the bell.

So there you have it! A ton of great secondhand finds I left behind. Which isn't to say I didn't bring home some nifty things recently. I totally did. But I'm gonna save those for another day.

How about you? What have you been finding and leaving behind?

p.s. you can make these photos larger just by clicking on them, but you probably already knew that!

Linking up to:

Simple Design's Thrift Haul
Cap Creations' Thrifty Love
Southern Hospitality's Thrifty Treasures

rupee crayon party favors

As part of the upcoming birthday party for Baby P, we made some crayons shaped like rupees (the gems used for money in the Zelda game series for Nintendo) for the kids to hunt for in the tall grass . . . and maybe inside some conspicuous clay pots.




This required a bit of planning. First came the rupee hunt idea, then the search for a jewel-shaped mold (I was willing to settle for anything vaguely jewel-shaped, and large enough not to be a choking hazard, but not so large as to use thousands of crayons). No luck. I thought about using cookie cutters, but couldn't find one the right shape, and in the end, wasn't sure that a cookie cutter would cut crayon wax well enough to warrant investing in a make-it-yourself cookie cutter kit.

I searched around a bit and finally happened across this silicone mold-making kit. i bought a one-pound box for this project, carved a rupee the desired shape and size from a bar of glycerin soap, then cast it in the silicone compound that my husband mixed up using the kit.




Note: there is a very short cure time on the silicone compound, and several people had posted product reviews mentioning that they couldn't get larger amounts of compound mixed before the cure time ran out, so their molds failed. My husband's trick is to pre-knead each part of the two-part compound separately to get them warm and pliable before kneading the two parts together. It extends cure time and I'm happy to say it worked like a charm.

We ended up with four molds made from one box of compound, and three were useable for casting crayons (the fourth ended up with some unfortunate air bubbles).

We sat down to peel a few hundred recycled (thrift store) and new crayons. Part way through the process, I discovered soaking them in a solution of warm water and dish soap serves the dual purpose of cleaning the recycled crayons and loosening the paper wrappers; give it a try!




The crayons were sorted by color to match rupee colors, then broken to bits and loaded into the cured molds.




With the oven temp set to 230 F, the molds were loaded into the oven atop a wax-papered cookie sheet and cooked for about 20 minutes until nice and melty.




Cooled, popped out, burnished with a spoon, and ready to be discovered by a bunch of little adventure kids. So fun!




The molds held up pretty well through the casting, cooling, and extracting process of close to a hundred crayons (hopefully enough for each kid to take home a full set!). In the end, a couple of molds had small tears at either end, but still held melted wax.

Thanks to this Flickr image, discovered via Pinterest, for the pinspiration!

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(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)

printing onesies with vintage wooden type

I'm 99% sure this will stay secret from the intended recipient here, but just in case, if you're related to me and expecting a baby, this is your first and only spoiler alert.



Is she gone? Great! Then here's the low-down.

I have a collection of vintage and antique wooden type blocks that I pull out for letterpress projects now and again. I wanted to print some onesies for a new family member, so I pulled out a box of type . . .




and printed these up, with some hand-painted accents.







Of course, this one is all hand-painted.




A fun afternoon project you can pull off during naptime!


(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)



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