Easy Upcycle; tea light burner to hanging pot

Just a quick and easy Upcycle I got the time to do today. I brought the above little pot at a Vinneis second-hand shop the other weekend for $3. It was clear that in it's previous life it had been used to burn tea lights in as the inside had a liberal amount of smoke residue. A bit of dish-washing soap and elbow grease got it cleaned up easily.

the fly-wire on top of a tea box

The holes at the bottom were too big to be used immediately as a pot. Conveniently I had stashed some old plastic fly-wire mesh that would work for covering the base and stopping my dirt from pouring straight through. I cut it to a rough circle and shoved it in the bottom. Crude but effective. 

And before anyone asks, yes I do tend to hoard random stuff - but it eventually comes in handy as seen today. (or eventually gets thrown out - whichever option comes first)

With some more hemp rope as used in my treasure chest only this time brown I created the hanging part of a hanging pot. :) Everyone should have a spool of string running around the house somewhere, it's so useful and versatile.

I cut 4 lengths twice as long as I wanted it to hang. Then I doubled them over and looped them through each hole at the top of the pot, like you would a phone strap. One string for each hole.  I then looped them all together at the top using one strand to wrap around the rest and hold them all secure.

Progress shots at this point:

Though really there were like 3 whole steps to this protect so I'm milking it a bit.

 

Add some dirt and a little succulent plant I picked up at a garage sale last weekend for just this purpose and here you go, 

done;

 I'm hoping the succulent will grow to fill the top and delicately dangle over the edges while not obscuring the pretty pot.

STOP, and yarn bomb

And zip ties, good for so many things up to and including it seems fence beautification!

Butterfly necklace

I picked up a copy of Cross Stitcher at the local newsagent the other day.  Almost entirely because it had a cat on the front and a wooden butterfly cross stitch frame. Actually not even 'almost' it WAS the entire reason.

On opening the kit I discovered I had gotten two bundles of thread...This would seem to imply that someone out there did not get their thread. So if you brought the August 2014 copy of Cross Stitcher and your free gift was missing it's bundle of floss. Hey it's at my place, drop me a line if you still need it :p

Getting two lots of floss might have been useful IF I'd ever intended to use the colours and design provided with the magazine. But no I never did. If I'm going to make a butterfly necklace then it's going to look like a real butterfly as much as I'm able to make it. And the 'jewel-toned wooden necklace' design with the magazine..? Not so much like a real butterfly. The original design as seen in the picture of the kit was designed by Angela Poole. My final product designed by me. The design size is 5.5x8cm and contains about 4hours of stitching work.

To begin I gathered some random leftover floss I had running around, black,  white, Sullivans #45300 (similar to DMC 970), what I THINK is DMC 900 or something close and from the original magazine kit DMC 3854. Googled monarch butterfly images and started stitching.  I made up the design as I went along, this seems to work well for me. 

I managed to almost immediately loose the needle from the kit. I may need to be careful where I sit/walk for the next few weeks. Fortunately I had two spare needles stuck in the black floss (lost them too, all in one evening. But these two I at least found again so no harm done).

I used a full 6 floss strands on the cross stitches rather than the usual 2 just for coverage on the wood. I considered going crazy and using 8 strands which would have been really thick and potentially luxurious looking but I didn't have that much floss and 6 seems to work well enough for me. For the backstitching I used 2 strands, I tried 1 but it just didn't stand out enough on the wings to look like a real monarch. Two worked much better although did have an annoying tendency to separate, showing the two separate lines instead of just one darker/thicker thread, I probably should have deliberately twisted it before stitching. 

The black in the design is straight forward. The orange in the bottom wings is the Sullivan #45300, in the top wings it's 4 strands Sullivans and 2 strands DMC 900. In the top corner of each of the upper wing's there is one cross in white and two in DMC 3854. 

Despite a bit of trial and error the stitching was fairly straight forward except one stupid row on the upper right wing right at the top. I stitched my crosses backwards. The whole row needed to be frogged.  While I was cutting out the incorrect stitches I managed to gouge my frame as well. This can still be seen if you look closely as the new stitches dip where the frame is damaged. Though it is slightly hidden by the backstitching now.

Lastly I coated a piece of back felt with some craft glue and covered (most) of the back. This was to obscure the stitching on the back. The felt doesn't quite cover everything but it does the job well enough. It'll make it more comfortable to wear too I expect. 

I actually spent the entire stitching experience thinking I was going to break the frame. The little guy was fairly fragile feeling and I'm a rough stuff. Fortunately it made it mostly in-tacked and looking good.

On a final note, the one thing I would recommend when working with wooden frames is a pair of pliers. Threading the needed under to tie down an end can be quite hard as the frame is unforgiving and the stitching quite tight. The pliers make it just that much easier to yank the thread through.

Finished Product;

And here be some progress picks;

Treasure chest :)

So a while back I picked up a bag of miscellaneous world coins a the ANDA coin show. They're all relatively worthless but a bitta fun to sort though and look at all the difference denominations.

And what better to store treasure in than a treasure chest?

I brought (mostly) everything I needed to make my coins a treasure chest from Riot Art & Craft on a whim ages ago. It's all been living on the living-room table till inspiration struck. For some reason that was this weekend/Monday. 

Stuff I used:
An unfinished wooden treasure chest
Art Culture acrylic paints, Burnt Sienna, Raw Sienna, and Burnt Umber
Random 3/4inch paint brush
Hemp rope (it calls itself 'rope' but it's really string)
< Red sparkly felt
Black felt + free cat fur
Craft glue
Mod Podge (water based sealer)
Copper Slug and Snail tape

First I painted the raw timber chest with Burnt Sienna all over except the straps. Then after that had soaked in and dried I painted a few random spots with Raw Sienna. I didn't really like the Raw Sienna colour and was pretty worried that I'd stuffed it at that point.  But the last layer of Burnt Umber evened it all out and finished it up well. Lucky!

I've never done much painting.  But this was relatively straight forward and enjoyable with nice results, I think I like messing around with acrylic paints. After the painting was done I sealed it with Mod Podge then filled the groves with string lengths of the hemp rope to add some definition and highlights.  I fixed each string lenght with some craft glue. 

I stuck a random bit of black felt on the inside of the lid of the chest with more of the craft glue. I didn't really measure it well or worry too much about the placement.  I'll live with the odd edges and rough positioning.  Then the red sparkly felt was used for the rest of the chest inside.  Also not measured particularly well. I love felt just for the abuse you can heap on it and still get a good outcome. 

The felt had actually been running around the living-room with the cats for almost 12 months so before I used it there was some cat de-furing to be done. It was nice to finally use the stuff. I originally brought it to make a Christmas gift for someone but she's managed to significantly annoy me (there are places you don't invite other peoples partners/boyfriends - a strip club is one such place.)

And moving on;

Lastly I used some copper tape I had left from gardening for the straps around the chest. The tape is basically a thin layer of adhesive copper. It was a rough start as can be seen in the finished product pictures. I put too much on one side several times but in the end product looks pretty good and I'm optimistic that once the copper tarnishes up it'll look rustic and blend in nicely. It's a fair bit too shiny at the moment.

And I only glued the chest lid down once. After I pried it reopen with a pair of little scissors I didn't have any further sticking issues. 

No progress pictures but here's my finished treasure chest. All that's left is to dig up my world coins and fill it (the bottom at least, it's a good excuse to buy some more next time I get the chance)