Drawing on the Furniture

On one of our various moves, my brother-in-law Rusty scratched the headboard of our bed.  Big time.  You can see it here.

Fortunately, until recently we had been using a box spring on our bed, which pushed the mattress up and concealed the scratch from view. Now, however, in preparation for our new memory foam mattress that will be arriving any day now, we have ditched the box spring (it’s gone into my office to make it into a guest room) and are using slats.  This makes the mattress wayyyy lower on the bed, and now, If I haven’t plumped the pillows up, you can see the scratch.

I’m not sure exactly what the finish is on our bed.  It’s something that’s not quite a veneer, not quite just paint.  Either way, I came up with an easy solution.  It turns out that Crayola’s black coloured pencil is the exact colour of our bed.  How convenient.

So I just coloured in the scratch.  It was that simple.  I mean the scratch is still there, because it’s pretty deep and shows up quite strongly in relief, but it’s a bit less obvious.  I also took the pencil around the bed and coloured in all the chips and nicks from the past seven years.  It worked beautifully.

If you have wood finish, why not try it with some brown coloured pencils?  I have heard as well that rubbing a walnut over wood scratches helps to hide them.  Try it!

Filing Facelift

Happy 400th post!

After I finished reorganizing the library at work I ended up with about two dozen of those cardboard magazine files that I no longer needed at the office.  I thought I could use a few in my home office, to keep my teaching stuff separate from my thesis stuff, and the Pie could always use some organizational aids.

The problem is, of course, that these are old, ugly, and UGLY.  So they needed a bit of a facelift.

First I took the suckers outside and used a can of spray-paint on them in an attempt to make them less ugly.

Unfortunately they were SO ugly that I went through an entire can of paint and the ugliness shone through still.  I did, however, forget to wear gloves and thus my hands (and my rings) became encrusted with paint.

Luckily a bit of vinegar, baking soda, and a pipe cleaner got them shiny again.

Can’t say as much for my hands though.

Anyway, I also had a can of spray gesso, and so I went with that, and it worked a lot better.  I only focused on the front part of the holder, the part you were going to see, so I didn’t feel I was wasting it on surfaces I wasn’t planning on showing.

Then I painted.  I stuck four together, upside-down so the angle was a good one for working, and got going with some acrylic craft paint.

A few vines and some grass.

Fun with rubber stamps.

More rubber stamps.

And the finished product, on my shelf.  Okay, it’s not my best effort, but I’ve been a little preoccupied recently and it’s better than what was there before.

Here are two little ‘uns that are going to play host to all of the Pie’s fighting games.  When I get more paint I’m going to do the Street Fighter logo across them to make him happy.

You can also use wrapping paper or wallpaper or even fabric to jazz up your holders.  Just trace the outline of the box onto the paper or fabric.

Cut it out.

Grab yourself some double-sided tape and slap it on. I am a huge fan of double-sided tape. I put that *%#! on everything.

You might have to trim the edges a bit afterwards but it’s easy peasy.

Diverting Disaster and Things I Learned from Christina Aguilera

Sorry for the lackluster posts this week, my trusty readers.  At the beginning of the week, my pantry looked like this:

So The Pie put his foot down and demanded some reorganization.  But with school and work and some ridiculous snowstorms, we had to do it piecemeal.  As a result, all available surfaces in my kitchen, including the floor, looked like this for a while:

At one point there was absolutely no counter space at all and so when the Pie did the dishes he had to put the drying rack on the floor, near Gren’s food and water.  Gren was seriously not amused with the disruption.

Now, however, my pantry looks like this:

Finally I can put all my spices on the same shelf, which appeals to the OCD in me.

Who’s to say how long this state of apparent tidiness will last?  Not me.

Anyway, I have a tip for you today, and it comes from pop singer/actress Christina Aguilera.  Actually, I don’t really know if it comes from her or not, but I saw her do it in Burlesque and I thought it was a neat trick.

I don’t know why this is, but sometimes I have trouble opening the lids of household aerosols (actually, the only household aerosol I have is cooking spray, but I’m sure this works with other things).  They’re not like spray paint, which has places you press to get them open.  So sometimes I struggle.

The trick, according to Ms. Aguilera, who did it with a can of hairspray, is to smartly rap the  bottom of the can on the counter top.  Then the lid will open easy peasy.  And strangely enough, it works!

Spray-Painting Indoors

Here’s a tip for the next time you need to do some spray painting and you have no choice but to do it inside.

To keep the mist of paint off everything else you own, do your painting inside a box.  It will catch most of the stuff that doesn’t land on the object you’re painting.

Just make sure to tape up any holes so you don’t have leaks.

Have a Drink on Me

Happy New Year!

I’m still catching up on some DIY gift posts here, so I’d like to show you some drinking glasses I made for some special people for Christmas this year.  If you’d like to know more about how to cut glass bottles, or how to etch glass, click on those links back there.

I spent a lot of time with a rotary tool (the most popular brand name of these is a Dremmel), grinding down the edges so they were safe for human mouths.  There was a lot of sparkly dust everywhere after that.

These ones were for Cait, who has a lovely dachshund named Ruby.  The glass I used came from vinho verde (the pale blue) and riesling (the dark blue).  Out of curiosity (and as a rather lengthy aside), I asked my cousin Lindz, who studied as a sommelier, why certain wines come in different coloured bottles.  I figured she’d know the answer — of course she did.  It’s all about the UV exposure.  Wines that are to be consumed in a short amount of time require no UV protection, hence the whites you pick up at the wine store coming in clear or blue bottles.  Reds need more time to sit around, and so come in the darker green or brown bottles.  Blue bottles, according to Lindz, are not as commonly manufactured, and so are more expensive, but easier to recycle.  I hope to have a bit more on the amazing machinations of Lindz and her very clever team when I’m in Vancouver this summer, but until then you can check out their most recent television appearance here.  If you are on the lower mainland, I recommend checking Re-Up out!

The dog stencils I got off the internet and stretched a bit to fit the glass diameter.  I used a cutout for one and then produced a “negative” using the bit I cut out and by frosting the rest of the glass.

These ones are for Rusty, who is living the life in a bachelor pad with another dude and an enormous television set.  I figure these glasses, which I made out of some fancy Italian water bottles, will hold beer and also a Rusty-sized serving of milk or juice.

I figured he would like to know how much he’s drinking. I like the slightly blue tint of these glasses, though the thinness of the bottle meant that I did crack two attempts by overheating it. That’s why there are only three — I cracked two bottles and then the grocery store stopped stocking that brand of water, so I couldn’t get any more.

And these ones are for Kristopf, who moved in with his fiancée, Atlas, this year.  I figure the glasses are grown-up enough that both male and female members of this household will approve.  They are made out of Perrier bottles, many of which I broke while learning how to cut on a curve.  I think the little sprout pattern is well-suited to the green glass.

Rack’ Em Up!

This idea comes from Man-Made DIY, who, in turn, took inspiration from another designer. I love how the internet works.  I made a further spin-off of this when I made the jewelry stand for my niece.

This is a hat rack/coat rack/anything kind of rack made from fallen tree branches.  The wooden frame is made from old boards we scrounged out of our tipsy garage.  Don’t tell my landlord.

The branches came from fallen trees on that construction lot near our house.  You might remember that we cut down a bunch of saplings there in order to build our wattle fence (which I still haven’t finished, sorry).  These branches were ones that had already fallen due to hurricane-strength winds, or ones that were part of trees uprooted in the construction process.  So no trees were harmed in the making of this project.  Well, no trees were harmed by US, at least.

We made two large racks, one for my dad and the other for Mrs. Nice.

First we cut up the planks we found in the garage, into 2 20″ lengths and 2 8″ lengths for each rack.

With difficulty, we screwed them together.  The wood was pretty warped, so one one of the racks it came out a little crooked.

Then we sprayed them black, because the wood wasn’t particularly interesting, visually.

Then we cut lengths of branch to fit inside the rack frame.

After sorting out what looked good where, we screwed those in as well.

I later sprayed the top and bottom of the racks again to hide the screw marks.

A finishing touch was a rusty bolt glued onto my dad’s.

And some shells for Mrs. Nice.

We left off hanging hardware because we weren’t sure where they were going to hang them.

They look pretty good, all things considered.

Functional, too.

Fast, Fun, Free “Fine” Art

This is probably the most awesome thing you can do with a printer in five minutes, for free.

Do you know what this is?  Probably not.  But don’t worry, you will soon figure it out.

I found out about this through Creature Comforts, and I loved it.

So you go to this site and you can use their online application, called The Rasterbator (gross, I know), or you can download it and use it on your computer.

Just follow their instructions to upload a photo of yours or to link to another photo on the internet.  Select the size you want and how you want to crop it, then get the program to rasterize the image.  Your computer will download a multi-page PDF document that you can then print out and assemble.

Of course the pages are in order, but they’re not as easy as you think to put together.  But you can figure it out.

Use a paper cutter or scissors to carefully cut out the excess border and then stick them all together.

Is this … ?

Yes, it’s Grenadier!

I used this photo here:

Now, it’s not a perfect job by any means — you can see the tape and the edges of the paper.  But for something this simple, it’s hella cool.

And now it’s up in our kitchen, the only place with any free wall space.

I can see these shellacked to a board for more permanence, or used as decoration at a party — the picture is the guest of honour, perhaps.  Or you could print one and give it, unassembled, to a friend for them to put together.  What a lovely surprise!

Half-Assed Refinishing

I found this table in the garage.  Like a bunch of other stuff in there, it’s a little run down and has been lying around for years.  And I’m kind of in need of a table in the kitchen by the window.  I’ve been using my step stool instead, but more often than not I need it as a step stool rather than a table.

Because the table isn’t mine, and doesn’t likely have any real value, I’m not concerned with doing a super good restoration job.  It won’t be anything like Danger K’s coffee table project, but it’ll do for now.

Of course I decide to do these sorts of things in the worst possible weather.  November in St. John’s is wicked windy, and I’m about to use spray paint.  I know.  I’m so smart.  Also, do you like how my porch is rotting away beneath me?  Yeah, I thought you would.

First I need to scrape away all the flaking paint that I can.  I’m not that concerned with getting it all.  I just need a cleanish surface that I can wreck.  So I used a putty knife to pry up the loose paint.

And a barbecue brush to scrape away all the other bits that I could.  I’m not going to bother sanding it.

Ready to paint.  Not that you’d notice, but I didn’t want to get too much paint on the porch, so with some tricky tricks I managed to get some newspaper underneath in all the wind.

I used the same spray paint that I used to re-paint the fire grate in our living room.  I gave it two coats and was pretty satisfied with the result.

I actually kinda dig how the white paint shows through in places.

So there it is, installed and ready to be used.

All set for my next project!

Hole in the Wall

Normally we have a little rack here where we hang the clothes that are not quite dirty enough to wash but worn enough that we can’t justify putting them back in our drawers.  One week we got a little lazy and overloaded the rack.  And it fell off the wall, taking the screws with it.  Leaving these holes.

It’s strange how such a little thing can alter your whole life.  Because we don’t have the rack at present, the Pie and I are putting our clothes on the backs of chairs in our room.  This means that some of the things we normally keep on the chairs are now in our closet.  Which means that our closet is full, so some things that are normally in the closet are on top of Gren’s crate.  Which means that things that normally go on top of Gren’s crate end up on the floor.  Our room is a certified disaster zone, all because of a stupid $15 clothes rack.  It’s utter chaos.  CHAOS, I tell you.

Gotta fix it to achieve equilibrium.

Patching small holes in gyp-rock or plaster walls is an easy process.

First, take a box cutter or other sharp knife and cut off the bits of plaster that are sticking out from the wall.  Sand the rough edges so everything is flush and level.

Use a filling putty like this Dry-Dex and a flexible putty knife to apply the compound to the holes.  Depending on the depth of your hole, you may need to add a little bit of compound at a time and allow it to dry between applications.

I like this stuff because it goes on pink and you know it’s dry when it turns white.

Lightly sand the dried compound, then wipe the dust off with a soft damp cloth.

Prime it and paint it. We always save the dregs of our paint for just such an occasion.  You can just put it in a yogurt container and it will stay fresh, though you will probably have to stir it well.

When you are putting up stuff that is going to hold other stuff, it helps if you can get your anchoring screws into a joist. If you use a stud-finder this is an easy task (the last time I put this up we didn’t have a stud-finder). And the bonus of this particular model is that it also tells me when I’m about to drill into a power line, saving me from auto-electrocution. Handy.

And now our life is back to normal.  PHEW! Balance restored.

Piñata-Copter, or, How I Didn’t Eat Enough Paste As A Child

The Pie and il Principe share a birthday.  Sure, the Pie is now 29 and IP is only 2, but they can still enjoy the festive atmosphere of a birthday party.

And what’s a children’s birthday party without a piñata?  It’s — well, it’s pretty much just a party without a piñata.  But that’s besides the point.

The Pie and I thought that we would combine il Principe’s love of vehicles with his destructive tendencies, and a piñata filled with toys (because this 2-year-old has enough extra energy) was the perfect gift.

First, I spent a peaceful evening with the dog when the Pie was out tearing strips of newspaper.  These are old copies of a certain legal newspaper popular in these parts.  While it’s a very good newspaper, I must admit to a certain satisfaction in tearing up all that legal verbiage.

I also prepared my helicopter rotor blades (I decided that this particular helicopter has six blades, so there), as well as the tail and all the other bits.  I pulled old cereal boxes and such out of the recycling for this.

And I cut up some clear plastic out of the recycling to use as windows.  This is going to be one classy chopper.

So now that you’ve got everything ready, you need to make your paste.  In a bowl, mix together 2 cups flour with 3 cups water.

I like to use a spurtle to stir my paste.  That’s right.  A spurtle.

Mmm, pasty.  Everyone always makes jokes about “that kid who ate paste” in kindergarten, but we didn’t have that.  We did, however, have the girl who, when asked, DRANK (like I’m talking glug-glug-glug) Elmer’s School Glue.  Bleugh.

And now we need ourselves a balloon, which forms the basis for many, many papier-mâché projects.  The last time I did papier-mâché I made an enormous head with a huge nose, cut out holes for eyes, borrowed one of my dad’s fedoras (he also has a large head), stuck a Press Pass in the brim and went around for Hallowe’en as a reporter.  It was a good costume.  I swear.

I attached the tail to the balloon with tape.

Now we paste strips!  Run one side of your strip through the bowl of paste.

Use your fingers to squeegee off the majority of the paste.

Slap that baby on your structure and smooth it down.

Continue with more strips, being careful to slightly overlap each one.

If you need help with balancing your project as you work, why not try propping it up in a bowl for stability?

Once you have finished a complete layer, use your fingers to smooth on some extra paste.

Let that set for a bit to become tacky and sticky.  While you’re waiting you can put paper on your other bits.

For the wheels, for example, I wanted a little bulk, so I dipped a few strips, crumpled them up, and stuck them to the wheel template before wrapping the whole thing in other strips.

Set those aside somewhere to dry.

Repeat the layering steps a few more times, creating three or four layers of paper on your main structure.  The focus should be on creating what will be a hard shell around your balloon.  I tried to add a bit more paper at the bottom of the chopper-balloon to help compensate, balance-wise, for the weight of the tail.

When you have enough paper on your structure, put it somewhere out of the way to dry overnight.  The top of our fridge is as good a place as any.  Plus it’s nice and warm there (our fridge is ANCIENT) and with the current humidity I’m hoping it will give the paste a boost in drying.  

I saved the extra paste, just in case.

Now to clean up!

The fortunate thing about flour paste is you just have to wet it again and it comes off anything really easily.

The Next Day …

Actually, this was two days later.  It was so gloomy and humid that the darned thing just would not dry.So now we get to get around to our painting and assembly.We bought this lovely metallic blue paint at the dollar store and thought it would look good on a helicopter.  It did, but the problem was that it was transparent paint, something the made-in-China label didn’t tell us.  Nor did it tell us that the paint fumes were highly objectionable.  But you get what you pay for of course.Onto plan B, then.  I painted the props and the wheels with the silvery-blue stuff and went off to find a more opaque solution to the plane problem.Thus I came up with India ink.  And ink is awesome because it dries really fast.Of course, you can still see the metallic paint through the ink, but I figured I would just paint over the quick-dry ink with more metallic paint.

Mercifully, just as I’d finished, the sun came out, so I left everything to dry for a bit.

So now we need to cut out a wee hatch through which to insert the prizes.  Using a box cutter, carefully pierce your shell and the balloon underneath.  POP!

Cut a hole only just big enough for your purposes, leaving a little flap so you can close it up again later.

There’s that shriveled balloon.  You can throw that out.

My helicopter is going to have a window, so I measured the “glass” to the side of the chopper.

Cut out a hole.

I think I may use the piece I cut out to make a fascinator at some later and unrelated date.

I fixed the window in place with hockey tape, that lovely universal adhesive.

I used a paper punch awl to poke holes to hang the suspension wires from.

You can see that balance is going to be an issue here.  I ended up taping a few rocks into the tail of the chopper to balance it out.

I stuck the props on.  The wheels refused to stick and were therefore scratched.  Bye-bye b’ys.

Don’t forget to put your prizes in!

Then the helicopter needed some accents.  On one side of the tail I painted on il Principe‘s initials and the year he was born, to look like some kind of ID code.

On the other I did his birthdate (21 July) followed by HB – happy birthday.

Then I added some dots that represent flashing lights, and blacked out the frame parts of the window.  And yes, I just made up where they went.

And there you have it.  Il Principe can’t wait to destroy it.

(Possibly) Related articles

• How to make a pinata at home! (maddiefillsmom.wordpress.com)
• How to Make an Ice Cream Cone Piñata (blogher.com)
• The Most Amazing Pinatas Ever (neatorama.com)