Door handle

I just had to change a halogen light bulb in the kitchen and thought I'd pass on this Trash to Treasure tip:

Check the plugs on your discarded halogen light bulbs - you may have a door handle there.

One section of shelving finished

Whew! I never would have believed this little bit took SO long. What with doing the work, internet searches to try and figure out the next step, and blogging about it, I'm up to about seven hours......

I wanted the upper left hand cupboard to be filled with liquor bottles but there was no way I was going to spend that kind of money. (Not to mention the fact blush  that those shelves are a bit too close together for actual bottles....something about measure first?!?) But we won't go there.....


I took a picture of the bottles I did have:

 sized it so the bottles would fit the shelves and printed several copies of it on 110# cardstock

 Cut the picture out with about 3/8" of cardstock below the bottom edge of the bottles. Folded the extra cardstock back at a 45 degree angle and glued the bottles near the front of the shelf. I later found another picture of bottles on the internet and did the same thing with that and glued it to the third shelf.

Cut a piece of matboard the size of the three shelves.

 Measured in 1/4" from the edge and cut out the centre.

 On the back, I measured in about 3/16", cut through the top layers of the matboard and peeled away some of the layers of paper.

I thought I had pictures of the next couple steps but guess not. On the front of the frame I scored mitre marks in the corners then stained the whole thing brown. Then I cut a piece of the aluminum mesh to fit into the recessed section of the back and glued the mesh in place.


Used a silk ribbon hinge to attach the door and added a Houseworks nail for a door handle.

Now I have to figure out some way to make faux glassware to go on the other side, make it and add the door there. (The one thing I've tried for the glasses so far didn't work.)

Also need to finish the counter and install it. Still thinking about putting a small sink in but haven't found a small enough piece in my stash to use for the sink.

Slow day

Here's the back shelving so far. The red counter is just set in place for now as I think I'm going to put a small sink in it under the mirror. Plus I need to make a few adjustments to the fit.

The 'glass' also needs to be added.

I didn't take pictures as I made this as it was a sort of 'by guess and by golly' project and I was constantly making adjustments as it came together.

Love my Lego blocks. They're wonderful for spacing shelves. Here I glued the shelves in place

 and glued the upright in later. This minimized the chances of smearing glue where I didn't want it when putting the shelves in place.

Still haven't decided where I'll be putting doors and what type I'll be using.

The 25th Anniversary concert of Les Miserables was on again tonight. Although I think I prefer the 10th Anniversary concert, I absolutely love Les Mis and think I've watched it almost everytime it's been on.

One of the volunteer jobs I have here in the condo is looking after the library. A neighbour and I alphabetized the books last year and I now shelf the books as they are returned or we get new donations. Not an onerous job but much too tempting most days...usually find at least one book that looks really interesting and that I just have to bring home and read. And a book a day does cut into my mini-ing time. LOL

Back shelving

Didn't get a great deal done today but at least got the shelving started.

Used a table in Word to design it and figure out sizes. The pattern piece on the right was cut out and put on the wood with double-sided tape.

The upper middle section will be mirror backed. After my trip to Dollarama to get a new piece of mirror especially for this, I came across the pieces of automotive mirror in my stash. Which is great as I'll be able to easily cut it exactly to the size I need/want.

All I managed to actually get done was the outer pieces and the uprights. 

The upper portion is only 3/4" deep and the base section is 1" deep. Realistically, they probably should have been deeper but since the entire box is only 7 5/8" deep I didn't want the shelving to take up too much space. Which was probably a mistake because my glass slides that I'd ordinarily use for the shelving in front of the mirror are 1" deep so now I can't use them. Will have to use heavy plastic for the shelving. The upper side sections will have doors on them. Still haven't decided whether to go with bulletin board doors or doors with panels of the aluminum mesh.

The tentative plan is to have a small sink in the counter below the 'glass' shelving.

But we'll see how things go tomorrow.

Mesh and darts

I played a bit more with the mesh yesterday and made a bib necklace and a piece that when shortened could be an armband or a bracelet.

You can see in the necklace that some of the mesh has been covered. The paint (This was about 50/50 turquoise paint and clear frost Gallery Glass) can be scraped off carefully but it's a PITA to do. When I've used paint or glue in this way to fill in a mesh, I've always used a paint brush but I had already washed out my paint brush when I decided to do the bracelet strip. The toothpick that I had used to mix the paint was still in the paint so I just used it to paint the bracelet by running the paint covered toothpick parallel across the mesh.

This worked much better than a brush in filling the holes and had the advantage of not getting paint on the back of the mesh.

* * *

Let's face it, a dart board isn't much use without the darts. What an incredibly fiddly job! But I did manage to make three darts and put them in the dart board.

I had some of this black and white telephone wire in my stash.

I had a couple inch piece that already had the wire removed. I cut the wire cover pieces in three strips, each one being about 1/4" white and about 1/8" black.  I inserted a piece of silver coloured wire into the white portion of the strip, leaving about 1/8" extending past the end and then cutting off the excess.

 Before the excess wire was cut off.

 I then very carefully cut the black portion of the wire cover into three equal sections, spread them out and used a marker to paint the inside of the wire black to match the outside.

At this point I got out my pin vise to drill three holes in the dart board to insert the darts - and promptly dropped the bit holder on the floor and spent the next 15 minutes picking up all the bits! Bit of blue air around here I'll tell you!

Finally got the darts in the board:

and using my trusty poster velcro from Lee Valley installed it in the barroom.

Positioning things properly in this room is difficult because the wood and wallpaper are so dark and it's hard to see pencil marks. The roombox is on a bookcase and there is no electrical outlet near it and really no place to put a lamp anyway. 

But I do have some of these tap lights that we use occasionally as night lights in the bedroom so I put one inside the room to give me light to work by - and see the pencil marks so items can be put in position. Big help!

Dart board in cabinet

The shelving behind the bar still hasn't come together in my mind so today I made the dart board and cabinet.

Using Google images, I found the images I needed: the dart board itself and a cabinet to put it in. Both had the RL measurements in the descriptions.

I copied the dart board image into a Word document, sized it. cut it out and glued it to a piece of matboard.

I copied the image of the cabinet into a document and sized it. I cut out the picture and used it as a pattern to make the doors. Then I used a stylus to add the routing detail along the edge. (The wood for the entire cabinet is 3/32" basswood.)

To make the chalk scoreboard, I inserted a text box in a document, sized it to fit the back of the door, used shape fill to colour it black, changed the font size to 5 and the colour to white and added the game scores. Cut that out and glued it to the back of the door.

 Stained the doors front and back.

Here I used Lego blocks to align the doors front sides together and used my pin vise to drill a hole through both where I wanted the door handles.

 Glued Housework nails in the holes for handles.

Built a little box to form the back of the cabinet.

 Stained the box.

I inserted a text box in another document and sized it to match the inside of the box and used that as a template to cut out a piece of cork liner (from Lee Valley)

 Glued the cork inside the box then glued in the dart board.

 Glued strips of silk ribbon to the box and doors to make hinges. I used two Lego blocks on their sides to hold the doors level with the box when attaching the ribbon.

 When the glue was dry on the 'hinges', I stained the ribbon. I added a little shelf with a piece of white telephone wire as a piece of chalk. I cut a small piece of matboard and used markers to colour the 'felt' for a chalk eraser.

Time to play

On May 13 I mentioned the modeling metal mesh I picked up at Dollarama and showed a file holder made from it. At the time I had thought I might make a pencil cup from a strip of it but changed my mind and used a plastic piece from a ballpoint pen for that.

While I was tidying up, I came across some scraps that were left over and couldn't resist playing with them.

It's a 100% aluminum 1/8" diamond mesh - very fine so it cuts easily with scissors and molds easily.

Here I used clear frost #16022 Gallery Glass to fill  in the mesh. You could also do this with Aleene's Tacky (or any other white glue that dried clear) for a window effect.

 Here the glass stain has dried. I can see this for a window, especially in 1:48.

Here I used Ruby Red #16015 Gallery Glass.

 Since I was just playing with scraps this is a bit lopsided but I can see this as a tiara or crown.

Or a filigree necklace, either plain or with only some of the diamonds coloured in.

Maybe a piece of modern art for the wall with variegated layers of the mesh...or maybe a sculpture. (With my limited abilities, it would have to be a very modern free-form sculpture. LOL)

It'll be fun seeing what other ideas come up.