pinterest challenge: vertical hanging planter (upcycle!)

Pinterest, I've said it before and I'll say it again: you'll be the death of me.

On the other hand, I'm lucky enough to get to participate in the Young House Love/Bower Power Blog completely unauthorized Pinterest Challenge because of you, so maybe it's a draw?

Okay, fine. I love Pinterest. I've found it an endless source of inspiration and ideas. The only trouble I have is in distilling the content; I want to do everything. Like vertical gardening, for example. Wall pockets, hanging planters, cinder blocks, you name it, I want to make it.

original pin here

inspiration board dedicated to vertical and hanging planters and gardens here

Distill! Distill!

I took all those inspirational images and tutorials and made this: an upcycled wall planter homage to wall gardens. It wasn't exactly free, but it was pretty inexpensive, and mostly used materials (and plants) I already had on hand.

Materials:

Old iron planter basket (sans chains)

burlap coffee sack remnants

soil

pine shavings

hardware cloth or chicken wire remnant

awning remnant

hens & chicks

wire

thyme

heavy coat hook 

Get an old iron planter basket (mine cost $2 at Bring). You'll need to acquire this first, as you'll use it to determine how large to cut your burlap and hardware cloth. You could also use an old bicycle wheel; one of the pins above makes a spinning planter with one. (Note: Bring marks prices with a paint pen; I've had good luck removing their prices with a Magic Eraser.)

After testing placement, replace your chintzy picture hanging hook with a nice, sturdy coat hook.

Sew a "pillow" from old coffee sack burlap, using twine pulled from the sack to sew it up. Turn it inside out and fill with a mixture of potting mix and pine shavings (to make it more lightweight).

Stitch the pillow closed and stuff it into your planter basket.

Cut some hardware cloth to the approximate size and shape of your container's back using tin snips. I had a large piece leftover from an old playhouse we tore down awhile back; chicken wire would work well, too. Cutting it down to an approximate size first makes it easier to work with when you're ready to do more exact cuts later.

Set aside your hardware cloth for the next step.

If you'll be hanging your vertical wall planter on a surface you want to protect marginally, you should add a waterproof layer so that the dirt and water don't soak through the burlap, causing stains and rot. You can use an old piece of tarp, or one of those poly pet food bags, or (like me) a piece of an awning destroyed in a windstorm. Cut it out and place it on top of your dirt pillow.

Trim down the hardware cloth to fit, then tuck it in place over the waterproof layer and use wire and some needle nose pliers to attach it to the basket.

Turn the pod over and lay it flat to begin filling in your plants. 

                               

I trimmed some of my hens & chicks plants down, and also added a divided thyme seedling and a whole lotta moss. (We'll see what survives!)

Poke or cut holes in the burlap and thread roots or runners into the holes.

 Fill in around plants with moss.

I hung mine up right away for photos, but pretty much universally, it's agreed you should water it and leave it flat for a couple of weeks to allow the plants to take root. So after taking some pictures, I took the planter down again and laid it flat to do exactly that.

Patience is a virtue.

Thanks for reading, and thanks to Sherry and Katie for issuing the Pinterest Challenge! It's always good to have the chance to mark a project off my list . . . especially one that first caught my attention over a year ago. 

Linking up to:

Young House Love

Decor and the Dog

Bower Power Blog

The ReModeled Life

Ginger Snap Crafts



The CSI Project

knock-off mercury glass lamp and coffee sack burlap shade

updated February 26, 2013: I'm so excited to be linking up again to Young House Love's Pinterest Challenge! The two inspiration projects below were pinned to my {private} Competition pin board back in December in anticipation of the So You Think You're Crafty? competition. In January, this project did well enough in the competition to qualify for the next level. At the bottom of this post is a link to my full tutorial.

I love mercury glass. Love it. It's shiny and vintage-looking and meant to look imperfect, all of which make it work well in my house. I especially love the way mercury glass lamps look, and the contrast of a rustic burlap shade really sets off the shiny mirrored glass. What I don't love is the price-tag.

For quite awhile, I've had the desire to try and make a mercury glass lamp with thrift store cast-offs, on a super small budget. Thanks to the So You Think You're Crafty competition, I had the motivation I needed to pull it off!

First: the originals and the low-cost knock off:

Originals from Restoration Hardware ($174 w/o shade) and Pottery Barn ($269 w/ shade). My copy: $18, w/shade.

I built it using an extra-tall glass thrift-store vase, a repurposed pan lid, the light kit from an old lamp, and some Looking Glass paint. The drum shade is one I stripped down and re-covered in coffee sack burlap. The Edison-style bulbs were a ReStore score for 50 cents apiece.

Mine has a more rustic shade than the Restoration Hardware version, and straighter lines than Pottery Barn's, and it suits me pretty perfectly.  I hope it suits you, too! At a savings of over 90%, you can't really afford not to make one!

For the full tutorial, you can click here, and I'll take you through it step-by-step!

Linking up to:
Junkin' Joe Vintage Finds

and the Pinterest Challenge

Young House Love

Decor and the Dog

Bower Power Blog

The ReModeled Life

engineering 101 : think outside the bots (intro to robotics)

At Bring today with the kiddo (age 32 months), walking by a shelf full of spare house parts:

"Want the robot, Mama. Want to hold the robot."

"What, this? You know, I think it's a doorbell, but you're right, it looks just like robot legs and body."

"Robot head. Want the robot head!"

"This one?" I hold up a thermostat from the pile.

"No! The robot head!" He points to a clock radio. 

"Oh, this one? Wow, that really does look like a robot head. Let's put them together."

"Robot! I love it!"

"What do you think his name is, kiddo?"

"Alphie. Alphie Robot."

that's how i roll: a skinny shelf for the bath / laundry room

I've mentioned before, I think, that we live in a little mid-century-era ranch-style house that measures under 1000 square feet. With a toddler. And some cats. Space gets a little tight sometimes, and creative storage ideas are always in high demand. So when, a couple of weeks ago, I was thinking about the problem area that is our shared bathroom / laundry room, I did some storage brainstorming.

There's not much room in there, but there is a space about a foot wide next to the stacked washer and dryer where I'd been stashing extra boxes of detergent, catfood, bleach, and a wastebasket. These had to be moved whenever I needed to get the broom or mop out. Not very convenient.

I thought about building a narrow shelf for the space, but a trip to Bring for some useable lumber instead turned up this: a narrow shelf (probably part of a desk) with sliding drawers on either side. (Cat not included.)

I picked up this pile of old casters there, too. Knowing they wouldn't be visible, I didn't mind the rust; they were a buck each, and the shelf was $10 or $15 I think . . . less than I would have spent on lumber and drawer hardware, anyway, and since I don't have professional carpentry skills, anything I would have built wouldn't have looked as finished.

What I can do is attach casters with a hodge-podge of leftover wood screws. That's how I roll.

Honestly, the hardest part of this project was finding four matching casters in the pile. After all four casters were attached, I just stood the shelf on its end, and rolled it into the space.

It's a bit hard to photograph in the cramped quarters of my bathroom, but I took some shots head-on and from the hallway to give you a bit of an idea.

There's a storage bin on top, and the wood rectangle is the front of a nice, deep drawer for storing dryer sheets, bleach, extra soap, etc.).

The shelf is deep enough and tall enough that I was able to stack three boxes of detergent powder in the back, with the cat food and in-use detergent containers in front. The mop and broom still fit behind everything else, but the casters make it easy to roll everything out of the way first.

Right now, because the shelf is technically on its side, the drawers open on their sides, too . . . but I'm pretty much okay with that. What I would like to do soon though, is to add some drawer hardware to make it prettier. As soon as I find the right ones I'll take a little photo for you.

What have you been organizing or simplifying lately? I love visiting your (non-spam) links in my comments section, so feel free to tell me where to visit!

Thanks for reading.


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

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