Project 7: The Spring Breeze Brings Forth a Myriad of Blossoms

Spring has sprung in Wynnewood Pennsylvania! I don't know if I'm just really unobservant or if all the trees came to life at the same time this year, but this week, I just kept noticing beautiful flowering trees everywhere. Plus it's been sunny and 70, which made stopping and smelling the roses much more enjoyable. So I decided I wanted to do something with a flowering tree for this week's project. I thought for a second about doing a window, but I think bunches of flowers are too delicate for a simple window. It would need to be a big window with lots of intricate pieces and I think it would walk a fine line of looking over worked. So I decided I'd try and paint them. I bought myself a lovely jar from Michaels and tried my hand at painting. I don't consider myself to be a painter, but this one turned out pretty well. Perhaps, I should reconsider. Anyway, I took a lot of pictures so please scroll on through.

The Process: 

I've basically told the process, but I have lots of pictures! I painted the trunks and branches of the trees first. I free handed all of my trees, so if they aren't quite arboreal, that's why.  

$1.99 and it comes with a lid!

I painted four trees and I made them four different colors; pink, purple, yellow and white.

Purple Tree

Yellow

Pink

White

I added a layer or two more of color to each tree. You'll notice in the final product, the tree branches are more obscured by flowers. 

Final Product:

This is the yellow tree, that doesn't look yellow
at all....

The next question was, what am I going to do with a jar that has trees painted on it? Make it a candle holder of course!

I hope you get to see a flowering tree this week!

Project 6: A Lesson in Suspension

This week has been crazy! I spent the majority of my week babysitting my favorite 2 year old. Last Saturday, I hung out with him from 9-4. At about 1, I was ready for a nap and I was hoping that maybe he would be too. We were in his room. He was playing with trains, I was lying on the floor. I looked up at the ceiling, wondering how I was going to convince him to take a nap and I saw that he had a mobile hanging from his fan. My thought, "hey, I could totally make one of those!" So that's where the idea came from. I also thought that it would be a less time intensive project, which would work with my schedule. However, I always seem to underestimate my projects, or maybe I just overestimate my abilities. Who knows? 

The camera that has all the pictures of my birds coming to fruition is currently in Indiana. So there won't be any pictures from the process.

The birds are the same bird in different colors. I'm sure you figured that out though. I drilled holes in their heads and tails to suspend them from my hoop.

The hoop is made out of 1/4 in copper pipe. Bending that into a circular-ish was such a pain! You can see it's not quite there, but that was all I had patience for.

After the birds and the hoop were finished. I simply had to tie the birds in place, which, again, took a stupidly long time.

 

I like this picture because you can't see the strings
and the birds actually look midflight.

This project to me is a good mark for the start of spring, which was officially the 21st I believe. Happy spring!

Project 5: An Illuminated Kingdom

This week's project is essentially a fancy floating candle holder. I'm not really sure where I got the idea, but I knew I wanted a castle, water and flames. Some castles have moats, so I went with that. The candles sit in the moat and illuminate the castle. I was sort of imagining the scene in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone when the first years travel by boat to get to Hogwarts and their minds are blown when they see how breathtaking the castle is. My castle is not nearly so ornate or immense, but in my head, it's a rockin' castle.  

Harry Potter! See what I was shooting for?

 

The Process:

First things first, I had to sketch my design for both the castle and the box. I made the box pretty boring. It's 5"x 7" if that helps put the size of the project in perspective. 

A pattern was made from the sketch and the actual pieces of glass were cut out. It's hard to tell from the pictures but my castle is a light purple-y color and its roof is a deep blue. 

Lined up and ready to be cut.

Layout

The pieces are foiled and soldered together. The nails are used to hold the pieces in their correct position so the don't move around during the soldering process.

This reminded me of Voodoo 

 

The box construction was pretty standard as far as boxes go. It had a base and four sides.

In the picture below, you will notice that there is copper foil running down the center of two sides. I keep forgetting that glass is fragile and not pliable. While trying to make sure my castle would fit correctly into the box, I pushed too hard and cracked the side. It was a happy accident because the foil ended up giving me a place to attach the castle to the box, but I was mad at myself for cracking another project.

Last step was to attach the castle to the box. I put water in my moat, which you can sort of see in the pictures and added my candles. I struck a match and hit the lights and took a whole bunch of pictures.

 End Result:

Backlit

This reminds me of a fortress with flames to deter invaders!