Chez Larsson

No.27 in Concrete - Starting the Project

So, I’ve been wanting to do another concrete craft ever since I participated in, and WON, the Panduro concrete challenge a few years ago. See my entries to the challenge at the end of this post.

Anyway, I had envisaged doing a concrete circle grouping like I showed here, but as the time went by I decided against the idea.

I still had some bags of concrete in the garage and was itching to do something fun with them. In the photo above you see the entrance to our back yard from the park. There were some random pavers going on a diagonal from the walkway towards the opening and they’ve bugged me ever since we moved in. 1) Don’t like those pebbled pavers at all. 2. On a diagonal? I like things straight.

 

So I dug them up. They’re not technically on my property so I saved them in the garage should anyone miss them. Not very likely since one was barely visible and almost completely overgrown (as a matter of fact I’m sure there are more but they’re totally overgrown). I then filled the holes with soil and there will grow weeds there in no time like the rest of that strip of lawn between us and the path, I’m sure.

 

My idea was to use this piece of chunky cardboard tube which I’ve saved for a long time to make a house number. We do get deliveries around the back of the house with gardening supplies etc and it’s hard to explain which house to deliver to when they all basically look the same and none have numbers back there.

 

So I took my tube and searched online for a font that would both work with the age of the house and would work well with concrete.  2 and 7 tend not to go well together I realized (I think it’s those diagonals again!) but in the end my choice fell on Geomancy which is kind of basic and chunky and I like the dipped toe on the 7 which makes it a tiny bit more interesting. I then printed the numbers in a size that would fit well inside my tube and cut them out to see what it looked like.

 

 

 

I should mention that I’ve have a lot of help on this project by a certain girl. A piece of paper on the floor, ANY piece of paper on the floor, and Mini will jump right in and help out.

To be continued.

While you’re waiting , check out my other concrete crafts:

Project 1 + 2: Table weights and outdoor candle holder

Project 3: Bookend

Project 4: Vertical house number

Project 5: Decorative star

Project 6: Advent candle holder

Project 7: Horizontal house number

Wille's Guitar

Don’t know if you remember but I mentioned that Wille was building an electric guitar as his final project at school. School’s out so it’s finished!

 

Wille wanted to design it and build it from scratch. Scratch as in buying planks of wood (here maple) gluing them together and cutting them out to his design.

 

Aside from maple there’s also mahogany. The origin is a couple of home made cutting boards from my ex father in law’s which he crafted back in the 70’s. The back plate which you can’t see in these photos is made of some scraps of teak which Martin had laying around.

 

 

Most of the cutting and drilling was done in the school workshop but some adjustments and additional drilling were also done at home in the hobby room.

 

The neck was bought semi ready made from China and the metal bits were bought online from England. Here they’re being tried on for the first time.

 

And here’s the final result. I helped with the sanding and the varnishing at the very end but the rest Wille did all by himself with some input from Martin and a guitar playing teacher at school. Pretty cool, huh?!

The Decorations

After Wille graduated on Wednesday and after his tour of the town at the back of the truck I had invited Martin and my ex-in laws for dinner at our house. It was fun decorating the patio for the occasion. My theme was white.

 

 

I know, so predictable but I really didn’t feel like going down the even more predictable graduation yellow and blue flag theme route so instead I took the my theme from the black and white photo of the sign I had made. When Martin arrived with the sign he stuck it into the flower bed at the front of the house along with the helium filled balloons.

 

I made simple bunting saying WILLE 2013 over the table by printing a letter each in dark grey on regular printer paper, punching holes at the corners after cutting the shapes out and stringing them with gift ribbon.

 

The black-and-white-Wille-as-a-toddler-photo-theme continued (inspired by this from you know who) on the champagne glasses (which I borrowed at work so I could avoid buying something I use so rarely AND avoid disposable). I bought the envelope seals from here and simply stuck them to the glasses. (Afterwards I just placed the glasses in the dish washer and the seals came off without leaving any residue.)

 

I’ve been holding on to these paper wheels for ages not knowing what to do with them but now they came in handy at the head of the table where Wille was to be sitting.

 

The little stickers also came in handy when I wrapped one of my gift to Wille (engraved silver cuff links).

 

I also used them on the paper napkins, the place cards and the cake (two back to back to back on tooth picks).

 

Even the soap in the guest WC got one. Oh, and the thank you notes Wille sent out after were embellished with the seals too.

 

We were super lucky with the weather on the day which was a total bonus considering that the day before was very cold. Great day all in all and I really enjoyed how (simply) the decorations came together.

New Broom

I needed a new broom. The reason? I used the old one to hack away at a large chunk of snow and ice that hung perilously over the entrance door as it thawed. It broke.

 

One of the reasons it broke was probably the fact that I hadn’t done a good enough job the last time around to attach the broom stick to the head. This time I made sure to get a good fit by sharpening the end of the stick further up…

 

… and pre drilling all the way through the head and stick and then driving a 5 cm/2” screw right through the whole thing. Now it’s solid. Trust me.

 

This time I wanted to do something different so instead of staining it I varnished. I used what I had around which might not be perfect for outdoor conditions but better than nothing.

 

Just varnishing was a bit boring though so I used masking tape to add some random stripes along the stick and painted them white.

 

Here’s my new broom all ready for some sweeping action at the front of the house.

 

Kinda croquet-esque don’t you think?

Folded Book

Here’s an easy, fairly quick and good looking craft that you can do if you’re like me and want to do something with your hands while you’re watching TV.

I used a thin paper back book which I got from the local charity shop but you can use a small magazine too like Jennifer does. She’s kind enough to share the instructions while I was just folding away selfishly.

You can also find a ton of folding book ideas on Pinterest, some more advanced than others.

I know from prior experience her on the blog that there are book lovers out there that probably think this is sacrelige but I think it's a neat craft so please spare me the comments that books belong in a book case, should never be recycled or tampered with in any way even if they're never read. Thanks.