Wood Crate Project

I've spent the last couple of days painting shelves in my house. Why am I writing about this?
Well, I'll tell you.

Nearly every single one of the shelves or bookcases in my house have been made from reclaimed wood, disassembled wardrobes, chopped up tables or any bit of straight edged wood I could get my hands on. I haven't taken any pictures of the shelves to post up here, well, because...life's too short to be posting pictures of my shelves made from reclaimed wood, disassembled wardrobes, chopped up tables or any bit of straight edged wood I could get my hands on.

But the fact of the matter is clear. We all need shelves.
(or am I on some kind of crusade to lift everything in the World at least 2 feet off the ground?) 

For some, a plain old plank of wood with a couple of brackets and you're done.
For others it can only mean the finest quality, limited edition, Baltic birch plywood shelves, hand carved by 8th generation craftsmen of some South American village.

I like to think somewhere in between is you and me.

Unless you're first choice is to get the IKEA catalogue out and you've got a little time to think about what you want, maybe it's time to try something different.

How about some old vintage wood crates.

Image: Living Room Interior Design

Image: baileys home and garden

I've always loved the look of this and I'm not sure I have the confidence to persuade my wife to allow me to stick a bunch of old wine crates on our wall...saying that... I have one issue if anyone is willing to try to achieve this 'look'.

And it's a pretty major issue.

These are the sort of wood crates you get in Ireland!

Image: William Murphy

Not exactly the same thing is it?

You could go shopping on eBay for Old Wine Crates but apart from the glaringly obvious 'it's vintage that's why it's expensive' price tag I find it increasingly more annoying that anything I type into eBay and set the search for IRELAND ONLY always comes back with 0 results.

Do we not sell anything on eBay??  Do we throw everything away??
Actually that's not accurate. We don't throw everything away. We do sell stamps and Des Bishop DVDs.

So, sometimes you have to make do with what you've got.

As nice an idea as these are,

Image: poetic home

Image: DiMeo Blueberry Farms

There's always the option of outdoor storage.

Image: GAP Photos

And if sturdy enough (with added support from screws) and with the right kind of paint why not try a simple storage unit for the kids room.

Image: ohhdeedoh (click link for how-to)

Another idea is you can always hide the quality of the crates by loading them up with everything you have in your house. (an idea I'm quite partial to if you were to ask my wife)

Image: theselby

Nothing like a bit of misdirection to hide the joints and cracks in your book shelf.

Which brings me back to the paint and why I've spent the last few days painting every square inch of reclaimed wood, disassembled wardrobe, chopped up table and every bit of straight edged wood that I now lovingly call our 'bookcase'.

Father's Day Project

 It's Father's Day tomorrow - June 19th - and it got me thinking about what the role of a Father is.


   Being a Father starts with 'Two o'clock Feed.'

Image: Norman Rockwell

        and probably ends with 'Breaking Home Ties.'

Image: Norman Rockwell

                                       
                                             And in between there's lots of 'Going and Coming'.

Image: Norman Rockwell

I've only been a Father for less than 1 Year so I have all that ahead of me but I wanted to get the celebrations off on the right foot.

So lets start with the obvious.

Please Please Please stay away from the following.

1. Anything with "World's Best Dad" on it. T-Shirt, Cap, Mugs, Pens, Cuff links and Socks.
These will just illicit an momentary "Aaahhhhh!" before being stuffed into the back of a drawer.

2. A Tie. This says "I spent about 3 seconds thinking about your gift"

3. Anything that sings.

It's not funny. It's not ironic. It's simply a waste of good batteries (now that's the Dad in me talking)


If you are going to give a gift for Father's Day. It's the simple things that stand out. The homemade and you can't get any more simple than this idea.

Image: Martha Stewart

All you need is some cardboard. (Maybe use an old cereal box.)
Some photos you are happy to cut up.
2 paper clips
Sellotape
Poster paint or left over paint from tester pots.

All you have to do is print out this template and then cut it out.
Place the template on a piece of cardboard trace around it and cut it out.

Paint the frame.

Select a couple of photos and trim them to fit the openings, making them slightly larger than the holes in the letters. Tape them behind the frame.

To make the frame stand up, bend open two paper clips and tape the small sides to the backs of the letters at the very bottom.

And that's it. A lovely homemade personal gift and it shouldn't cost a penny.


On a final note.
If you really must do the whole "Worlds Best / Greatest / #1 Dad" thing then at least have a look at this.

Here's a bunch of free printable images that you can use to stick around the house or to make your own cards.

                                                               
                                                               Click HERE for Card 1

                                                                       & HERE for Card 2

Next up is Banners. Click Here

Here

And finally HERE for a whole range of tags, flags, bottle labels, napkin rings, tented cards, party tags and banners.

 

My own personal opinion is that homemade is better than shop bought. I don't mind the bumps and crumples, the sellotape and glue, the tears and scribbles and fingerprints.

I know that time and effort and most of all love went into it, but saying all that, if all I get is "soap on a rope" with #1 Dad engraved on it I can be sure of one thing.

A Father's role is to pretend it's the best soap on a rope ever!

Bloomsday Project

Image: Maxf

Today is Bloomsday.

To those that don't know it's a day of celebration for all things James Joyce with events around the city of Dublin and in countless other cities around the world.

It's a huge day of cultural significance that involves readings and dramatisations of Joyce's work. People get dressed up in Edwardian clothes and go on pub crawls with crowds of people retracing the journey of Leopold Bloom, the main character in Joyce's novel Ulysses, which takes place on June 16th.

As much as I'd like to suggest recycling the pages of the book for numerous projects (and when I say numerous I mean copious. There are over 1000 pages) but I can't quite bring myself to advise you to destroy a perfectly good book.

So in the spirit of Joyce who set the events of the book on June 16th, the date he went on his first outing with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle, and also taking the main character of Bloom as an inspiration, here are 2  romantic ideas that won't break the bank.

First up is an idea I found over on How About Orange

Image: How About Orange

Pop on over to the site where it gives you a template to download. All you need is some old newspaper or magazines. Follow the very simple instructions to complete this effortless project and end up with some nifty recycled paper flowers.

Image: How About Orange

Image: How About Orange

If that looks like too much work then you can't get any easier than this next idea that I found over on Family Chic

Image: Family Chic

All you need is a small glass and a balloon. 

Image: Family Chic

                                                   Cut off 1 inch at the mouth of the balloon.

Image: Family Chic

              Try and keep as much of the narrow part of the balloon as this will be the neck of the vase.

Image: Family Chic

Slip the balloon over the glass and depending on your preference pull the neck out or push it into the glass.

Image: Family Chic

So there we have it.

Two romantic ideas for what is possibly one of the most romantic cultural days in Irish literature.

And to sign off here is a third idea from the man himself.

"I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."

Lollipop Stick Project

Image: DormSlate

Do you work in an office?

Are you looking out the window right now?

Can you see the sun bouncing off the shimmering windows of the office block across the street where an entire floor of people can be seen happily munching away on ice pops bought by some good natured colleague?

Do you wish that was you?

Well why not take that leap and be that good natured colleague, eager to please their co-workers - but more importantly wouldn't it just be great to have an ice pop right now.

Over the course of the summer, various staff members will take it upon themselves to go buy the treats and this normally works on a 'who's turn is it now?' type rotation.

There are 2 ways you can go about this.

Option 1. You go around the room and make a list of who wants what.
2 x Brunch, 1 x Mint Chocolate Feast, 1 x Wibbly Wobbly Wonder, 2 x Cornetto (one chocolate, one strawberry), 3 x Almond Magnum, 2 x Loop the Loop, 1 x Choc Ice and on and on and on...
(The problem with this is there's a very slim hope of finding all those ice pops in the one shop.
Therefore, multiple shops, longer journey, melting ice pops and nobody wants that.)

Option 2. Everybody gets the same.

Either way you are left with a big old pile of lollipop sticks.
Now, if you grew up in the 70's like me then you were surrounded by the likes of this and one look at it will either stimulate your nostalgic synapses or send you screaming away from your computer screen and into the nearest dark corner to cry.

But fear not. This is not about lollipop stick bowls or houses. There's no lollipop stick bridges or chairs to be built here. This is about War!

War against the Zombies. Or so I keep getting told!
Apparently it's inevitable that we are going to be attacked by Zombies. It's only a matter of time!
So until then - get some practice in.

click to enlarge and then print
Image: John Austin Books

click to enlarge and print
Image: John Austin Books

Having watched the video you can see that all you need are your lollipop sticks and a few office supplies.
Elastic bands, bull clips, plastic spoon, sellotape...all of which can be found around the office.

As for the pegs...well, you're off to the shops to buy ice pops anyway - you might as well pick up some pegs too!

Synchronicity Project

Image: Jim Linwood

Do you believe in Synchronicity?

Let me come back to that. I need to explain how I got there.

A few days ago my wife told me on May 24th Bob Dylan was turning 70. "Fantastic", I thought.
Not really for the fact that the man was still with us, but for the fact that here's something topical I could write about?

Until I looked up Bob Dylan & Recycling.

This is all I came up with.Which seems like a waste of a  perfectly good record and not the "perfect gift for any music lover" or so claims Broken Record. I think the perfect gift for any music lover is, well.... music!

Image: Broken Record

And so I had hit a metaphorical brick wall.
I had gone the wrong way down a one-way information superhighway.
An ethernet cul-de-sac if you like.

Until fate stepped through the front door in the shape of my wife, home from work.

Freeing me up from paternal babysitting duties I went for a drive to have a think. Driving about I noticed a bunch of wooden pallettes set to be thrown out. My mind raced back to this post. An idea for making chairs from scrap wood and easily adapted for pallets.

Image: sixty one A

Thankfully I had an old towel in the boot and I used that to wipe down the grubby and dusty palette before putting it in my car. The towel was one of those huge beach towels with a palm tree and glowing sunset and I've always thought that was a bad design with regard to Irish people and sunbathing. As a nation, when abroad, we normally stay in the sun so long it's very probable that we will get sunstroke and then run the risk of mistaking an actual palm tree for our lovely soft beach towel. Ultimately knocking ourselves out by repeatedly trying to lie down against said palm tree all the while wondering why the printed glowing sun is rapidly disappearing off our once soft but now mysteriously hard bark-like towel.

But I digress. Stay with me now. This is where the synchronicity comes in.

I got to thinking about all the different types of towels we have.
The bath towel, a tea towel, a face towel and hand towel, the beach towel, a foot towel for getting out of the shower, guest towels that only come out on special occasions and on and on and on.....

So there it is I thought. Finally an idea. Recycle old towels. Must be something on the internet about that.

And guess what folks. Believe it or not. Today. May 25th is Towel Day.
Hows that for synchronicity?

Image: Kreg.steppe

Towel Day is a celebration of Douglas Adams and as a tribute fans of the man and his work carry a towel with them at all times during this day.

Now, if necessity is the Mother of Invention then surely Synchronicity is the Father of Digression.

If none of this is very important to you then, ok.
If all you want is some tips to recycle some old towels then jump over to TipNut where there is over 20 ideas like this one here.

Spa Slippers

Image: Craftynest

If you are looking for something else I shall just leave you with a quote from Douglas Adams himself and I think it sums up this post.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be"

Pinhole Camera Project

Ever since my post last week showing you how to make a box  from a recycled cereal packet I've been trying to come up with more ideas to use up all that wasted cardboard that ends up in my bin.

My wife doesn't know it yet and undoubtedly she will now, but I have been squirreling away pieces of cardboard all week long and I think I've found a really good use for some of it.

Here's a fun idea to make a cardboard pinhole camera.

A pin hole camera is a very simple camera without a lens. Effectively a light-proof box with a small hole in one side.

It may look difficult to make but a diagram can be found here courtesy of Francesco Capponi.

Print out the diagram on some paper and then glue the page to some of your collected cardboard.
Instructions to assemble it come in a step by step pictorial below. You can click on the image to enlarge it.

Here's a link to the forum on flickr where you can share pictures and get advice.

Box Making Project

Image: Patent Pending Projects

A few years ago when the plastic bag levy came in people where up in arms about being charged 15 cent to put their shopping in a carrier bag. As a result, in the following months, there was an awful lot of "lazyman load" related accidents. When we had to start paying for bags we realised how wasteful we were. We would buy our shopping. Bring it home. Put it away and the bag would end up in the bin.

The more environmentally friendly of us would have stored these bags in a larger plastic bag that was most likely kept under the sink. And lets face it, in the past when we saw someone pull a crumpled up plastic shopping bag out of their back pocket or out of a handbag, we all thought the same thing. "What a cheapskate!" Now we think, "Damn it. I forgot the bag."

Since then a lot of shops provide brown paper bags as a substitute for plastic as there's no price levy. For a while there it felt like we were all living in America with our brown paper bags with lettuce and celery sticks popping out the top, but when we returned home, as before, the shopping would be put away and the bag ended up, well...you know where.

After all, we didn't have to pay for it so why keep it?

We seem to treat 99% of the packaging of our food in the same way. We don't see that we are paying for the packaging. Just the product. Although some of us are clued in to the whole "I'm buying the no name brand of (fill in product here ......  ) as it's the same company. It's just the packaging that's cheaper".

One well known coffee brand is trying to cash in on this idea with the following ad.
A range of people are seen trying to carry their coffee granules loose with them and are unsuccessfully. The voiceover explains that (this brand) in trying to use less packaging. They tried losing 100% of the packing but it didn't work so they've settled for 97% less packing in their new Eco refill packs.

What they don't tell you is that this new Eco refill pack is more expensive than their regular pack.
Is this the price for helping the environment?


I think the best way to help the environment is to reuse most of the packaging that we discard.


I decided to reuse some old Cereal boxes I was just about to throw out. At the same time I was thinking about getting some nice boxes to store old photos and logic stepped in and gave me this idea.

Image: Patent Pending Projects

This is so simple. It took about 2 hours to make.
Here's what you need.


Materials:
1. A couple of empty cereal boxes (or any cardboard packaging - your going to be cutting them up and sellotaping them together so anything will do.)
2. PVA glue (from a local art/craft or office supply shop) and small brush.
3. Scissors
4. Ruler
5. Sellotape/packaging or masking tape
6. Cloth or Material (I've use offcuts from curtains that were too long. You could use anything. Try wrapping paper, colour pages from a magazine, an old T shirt, or how about one of those brown paper bags you picked up at the shops?)
7. (Optional) Name plate. (I picked one up in a DIY shop for 40 cent) and some string.

Image: Patent Pending Projects

Instructions:
Step 1: For the box cut 5 rectangle pieces from Cardboard.
You will need
1 x 9 inches by 6 inches.
2 x 5 inches by 6 inches
2 x 9 inches by 5 inches.

Image: Patent Pending Projects

Image: Patent Pending Projects

Image: Patent Pending Projects

Sellotape pieces as shown in the pictures. Flip cardboard over and tape reverse side also for extra stability.

Step 2: For the lid measure a piece of cardboard at least 1/4 of an inch larger than the base of your box.
Then measure 1 and 1/2 inches around that. This will be the side panels of your lid.
Cut out as is in the picture and tape the sides up with sellotape.

Image: Patent Pending Projects

Image: Patent Pending Projects

Step 3: Do the same with your box.
If you have any card left over line the inside of your box and lid to hid all the sellotape.  Secure with PVA glue.
(This is optional and really only for aesthetics)

Image: Patent Pending Projects

Step 4: Cover the box.
Cut a piece of fabric to cover the box leaving enough spare for a 1/2 inch overlap on each side. Place the base in the middle of the fabric and glue in position with PVA glue.
(Tip - paint the entire base with glue otherwise the glue only sticks to certain parts of base and will be clearly visible once dry)
Next glue the longer sides in place first and glue overlap down.

Image: Patent Pending Projects

Next glue along the overlap of the front and back panel and fold over to make a neat seam.

Image: Patent Pending Projects

 Step 5: Glue front and back panel to box.

Image: Patent Pending Projects

Step 6: Tidy up the fabric with some glue and fold in. Stick down inside of box.

Image: Patent Pending Projects

Image: Patent Pending Projects

Repeat process for lid.

Step 7: (Optional) Place the name plate in position on box and mark it's position by puncturing 3 holes through the cardboard and fabric. Cut 3 small pieces of string and knot them all at one end. Line up the name plate again and push the pieces of string through holes. Secure on the other side with another knot or use some tape to hold string in place.

Image: Patent Pending Projects