What Can You Make With Barbeque Skewers & Dental Floss?

BBQ skewers from the dollar store +
2 rolls of freebie dental floss from the dentist =
What??

I was reading the latest issue of HGTV Magazine on my Nook Sunday morning while watching the Steelers game and saw this decorative spiky ball thing. The article said it was $25 at zgallerie.com (though the price today on that link is $29.95). With school back in session and a ton of things to budget for with winter approaching, even that is not in my budget. But I really wanted that spiky, atomic-style ball. And that got me to thinking: how could I make one with stuff I already have? Lightbulb time! BBQ skewers and dental floss!

Crazy, right? I have an old tissue box almost full of sample containers of dental floss that I have collected over the years of taking the kids to the dentist, and I have two packages of BBQ skewers I got at the dollar store, and BBQ skewers tied together a certain way would look an awful lot like that spiky ball thing.

So, Steelers game over (Steelers won in a squeaker!), I grabbed a box of floss and the skewers and set to work. I tied the floss to one skewer right in the middle, and then started twisting the floss around more and more skewers at odd angles until I got this:

But it needed a coat of paint. I had purchased a can of chrome spray paint a couple months ago for another project and had some left, so I spray painted it with that, and the end result of an hour of tinkering with random objects got me this:

It looks great! It shimmers and shines in the light, and it cost me a grand total of $1 to make. Can't complain about that, and it looks AWESOME sitting next to my retro lamps. :)

Duct Tape Canister

If you've read my post about making decorator bins out of cereal boxes, you'll know that I am always repurposing stuff. I have had my eye on this cardboard bread crumb canister since I bought it, and I saved a couple of them, but someone threw them away. Anyway, I finished another box of these last night, and decided today - after I had run out of work stuff to do - to do what I was planning.

You see, I had purchased a roll of retro-ish decorator Duck brand duct tape, so I took this...

...and made it into this:

I don't know what I am going to do with it yet, but it looks pretty cool for a five-minute project.

Wax Lotus Flower

Last night, I went grocery shopping. (Pity me.) It was AWFUL.

But afterward, I got to watch Nashville and have some apple wine and white cheddar Babybel cheese. Shelby ate a lot of the cheese, which is why she is eating a lot of fruit today. Anyway, I saved the wax coverings from the cheese and made this while watching TV:

Rehabbed Washing Machine Update

 I have been utterly SWAMPED with work, so I haven't done very many really creative projects here lately outside of the band, marketing videos for work, and some graphics for work here or there. But, my previous creative projects are taking care of themselves... well, with some water.

As you may recall from a previous post, my Tommy Lee and I rehabbed these old wringer washing machines, brushing off the dirt and giving them a coat of red paint. I also planted lots and lots of all white petunias in them, with the hope that they would look like soap bubbles pouring out of them. Now that the petunias have had a chance to grow, I really think that they are starting to look like soap bubbling over the top. What do you think?

I bought WAAAAAY too may petunias. After giving my Mom a flat of them, I still had this may left over from the project!

Decorator Bins From Cereal Boxes

So, the computer I use for all my work stuff, well, it's 7 years old. Things wear out. This was the case with my hard drive. Last Thursday morning, I went to to turn on my computer and the hard drive made a horrific grinding noise and then I got just a black screen with a blinking cursor. BIOS showed that the computer wasn't even seeing the drive. I have to assume that the drive is completely toast, though I will try to access the files there to make sure that all is, indeed, lost. Since I automatically save my files and work documents to an external drive, the only things I have lost are about a year's worth of emails (I know, I know: back these things up... but I am HORRIBLE about that, hence, the external drive) and a rather vast collection of fonts, neither of which I care a whole lot about, so, outside of the fact that I spent ALL DAY yesterday formatting and setting up a new hard drive, I haven't lost much.

In fact, the inability to do any "real" work actually gave me some time to complete another project I saw on Pinterest: making decorator bins from cereal boxes!

I have been saving cereal boxes (much to the dismay of my family, who can't figure out why I won't throw "garbage" away) for a few months now, and, when I saw my opportunity to make these, I even stole a couple more boxes even though the cereal wasn't all eaten yet. The bags inside the boxes work just fine as containers, you know. Anyway, I started by cutting the front and back panels from the boxes I'd saved:

 I had enough panels to make two boxes: one that was 13 inches long by 10 inches wide, and one that was 10 inches long and 8 inches wide. My next step was to measure the angles so that the bins would have a nice slanted stance. For this, I measured one and half inches from the bottom corner of the side panels and drew a nice slanted line from the corner above it:

For the short front and back panels, I measured in two inches on the bottom corner and drew my lines. I also ended up cutting about two inches off of those panels, so that the whole thing would fit nicely. This meant a lot of matching up lines and corners and whatnot to make sure everything would fit together nicely.

Then, I cut everything out a little wide, measured again, and trimmed to fit. Now, I had all my stiffening panels:

Next, I laid out the pieces on some fat quarter quilting material I had. I had worried that I wouldn't be able to fit all the pieces onto a fat quarter, but they almost all fit. The only piece that was different (and only on the smaller bin) was the bottom piece, which I cut out of a leftover piece of drapery fabric in a nice, contrasting orange stripe.

And then I repeated the layout and trace routine for the lining fabric:

Now, time to sew. First I sewed all the outside fabric pieces to the bottom panel piece:

And then I sewed all the lining side pieces to the lining bottom piece:

Next, sewing the outside to the lining, which was tricky, because I was sewing a BOX. The important thing here is to pay attention to what gets sewed to what. This means turning fabric this way and that sometimes, inside and out sometimes, etc. So, anyway, I sewed three of the four corners of the outside to the lining:

And then, before sewing the last corners together, I slid in the bottom piece of cardboard into the pocket I'd made:

 Before sewing it shut, sewing the last corner together, and then repeating all of the above for the larger box.

Now, in the instructions I linked to above, it says that you can sew right through the cereal box panels. I tried this. It worked okay for the first two sides, and then I got halfway through the third side of the first bin I was closing up (the big bin), and my sewing machine grunted and then broke the sewing needle. Without a backup needle (silly me), I had to enact a backup PLAN.

Sewing machine needles with cases - Pack of 48 (Google Affiliate Ad)

Now, someone a little more experienced with sewing projects would probably grab some fusible interfacing tape and iron the top seams and border pieces together, but I am not that person. No, I didn't have any tape like that (I do NOW, though), so I got out the hot glue gun and carefully seals the tops of the bin sides and then adhered the trim pieces the same way. (Luckily, I had sewn the edges of MOST of the trim pieces before I tried sewing the damned cardboard.)

Thermoweb 101642 Heatn Bond Hem Iron-On Adhesive.38 in. x 10 Yards (Google Affiliate Ad)

So, after much aggravation (as is typical for me with sewing projects), I had two finished decorator bins:

Despite the problems, I am actually sort of pleased with how they turned out. It helps organize the baby's toys and they look good in my office, where all her toys are being stored until her room gets built this summer.