Turning a broken bowl into a work of art

Months ago Dad dropped one of the small plastic bowls and it broke exactly in half.  He brought it to show to me and I immediately decided to hold on to it to make something with it.  Around the same time we put in extra cabinets in the kitchen and I saved the leftover scrap from the counter top for the project.

Yesterday I finally got around to doing something with the bowl and counter top pieces.  I painted the edges of the counter scrap so it was all black using leftover paint from the penguin army project.  I then used a hot glue gun to attach the bowl pieces to the counter top scrap.

When Dad got home I asked him if he thought it would stay attached because when looking at some edges were clearly not touching the counter top.  He proceeded to grab one of the pieces and pull it off.  That clearly illustrated that it would not hold up to anything in the bowl, but that was already quite obvious and I merely was wondering if it was attached enough for its own weight, which they seem to be as long as someone doesn't pull on it!

After reattaching the piece Dad pulled off, I remembered I had some colored stones from an abandoned stepping stone project.  I glued those on to make it look like a flower is growing out of the bottom bowl.  At that point I was kind of wishing I had only put one half of the bowl on because the top bowl did not have enough counter top area above it to do a flower with the stones.

In searching around for other things to use to make something coming out of the top bowl, I found some wine corks and a bottle cap with an apple that got me thinking I could make an apple tree coming out of that bowl.  At first I was going to attach the bottle cap directly to one of the wine corks, but then I found the stash of used up tape rolls that I keep saving thinking I will make fun napkin rings some day.  I painted four of them green and glued them together to be the tree top and then glued the bottle cap in the middle.

The final decision came down to which of the two wine corks to use for the trunk.  One was a Kendall Jackson one, so it says KJ on one side.  The one I decided on, though, was the Black Opal one glued on with the Opal words facing out.  I mainly choose it because it was more porous and thus easier to stick on.  Also, the KJ would have been side ways whereas the Opal lettering is upright when the tree trunk.

Watching the Solar Eclipse

This evening we all watched the solar eclipse in the backyard.  It is not often we all end up in the backyard since it is not accessible for Mik to get out there.  I made the pinhole solar viewer from a cardboard box lid this morning and was ready to watch it when it started, but Mom and Dad did not get my text until 6 p.m. and Mik had to get changed when they got here, so they did not all end up outside until a few minutes before the peak.

It was cool to see the eclipse reflection on the garage.  It was especially cool to get Mik out to do something in the backyard.  If we just got the motorhome out of the driveway, then he could get back there with his powerchair and try out shooting hoops.  Maybe, by the end of the summer and when it starts to cool down again it will be doable, as that is on the list of summer projects to fit in between out kaotic summer travel schedule.

Painting my Switch and Outlet Plates Blue

While Mom and Dad worked on ripping out the carpet and getting my room ready for the Flor tiles, I took the easy task of painting the outlet and switch plates blues before putting them back on the white walls.  After spilling Dad's cup on the counter and a half hour of him nicely cleaning up the mess I made, I painted the plates with the Sorcerer Blue paint, so they match the one blue wall and the blue ledge.  I knew it would make the white walls more interesting, but I was surprised what a simple little color made quite an amazing difference.  I still have a really awesome Sorcerer Hat thing to make for the wall opposite the blue one, though.

First Attempt at Spoon Garden Markers

I have been wanting to make markers for the plants in our garden since we planted it back in February, but was not sure what to use.  Last weekend I learned about turning spoons into garden markers and thought it would be great to try, especially since we had quite a few more spoons than we really need.

I did not really follow the directions I had seen, as they recommended mod podge and other stuff I did not have around the house.  What I did have, though, was a container with some of the white paint for finishing the edging in my room.

In my first attempt to turn the spoons into garden markers, I was quite lazy and decided to just dip the spoons in the paint.  I did let some of the paint drip off, but I really was going for quick and did not really let enough drip off.  Thus, I ended up with them not really drying all the way through and the back of the spoon ended up with a spot not covered or still wet where it was resting on the wax paper.  This was after drying overnight.

I ended up easily rinsing off the paint and picking off the rest.  Next up I am going to just paint them with a paintbrush, so I do not end up with the pools of paint accumulating in the concave part of the spoon.

While it did not work out so well, as rushing a project usually does not, but I did make a cool video of dipping the spoons.