Chez Larsson

No.27 i Concrete - Preparing the Mold

I’m back with more on the concrete house number I wrote about last week.

So, Mini approved, so I continued.

 

 

I used the cut out numbers as templates and traced around them onto some foam core board. I did two of each.

 

Then I gathered my materials. Concrete (the fine kind), a bucket to mix in and some milk cartons.

 

I’m not getting into detail on how I made the numbers for the mold but basically I cut out the numbers from the foam core board and then cut pieces that went in between them to create 3D letters. For the straight sections I did longer pieces and for the curved passages I just made tiny little pieces. No need to be super precise in cutting these, just as long as they are all the same depth and don’t protrude outside the numbers. I used a glue gun for the assembly.

 

Here’s where the milk cartons come in. Milk cartons are great for concrete projects as they’re water resistant and slightly glossy so they’re easy to remove from the concrete once it’s set.

 

I was super lucky here to realize that the depth of my letters turned out to be exactly the depth of our milk cartons so I cut the cartons open and got four strips out of each one which was great. I used hot glue to stick the strips to my number carcasses. I used the existing folds on the carton to get sharp edges where I could and when I needed to I used duct tape for reinforcement.

The scissors are by Fiskars by the way and in case you’re wondering. The pattern’s not really my thing but I was happy to send some old wonky craft scissors packing and let a set of these move in with me in my hobby room via a surprise package earlier this summer. Can’t get away from the fact that there are NO better scissors out there.

 

So after a bit of hot gluing and taping i was left with a 3D milk carton clad 2 and a 7.
 

Are you getting the picture?

Stay tuned for the rest and the reveal!

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

Rosie

Meet Rosie. I was introduced to her at the local garden center. She was in the Weekly Special aisle and I got a crush.

 

I think meeting her was fate. See I have this empty spot where the fence between us and our neighbor ends and I’ve been unsure of what to place there since both Mini and Bonus like to cross over there. I wanted another white rose (I have a climbing one at the front and was able to transplant a really pretty one from one of the flower beds that I dug out last year) somewhere in the back yard but I didn’t want something low and prickly in that very spot.

 

So good thing Rosie’s a leggy lady!

 

Now Mini and Bonus can just walk past her slenderness.

 

Rosie’s also known as Kailani. I love how she’s the perfect ending to the fence. Now I just have to make sure to read up on how to properly prepare her for winter. I remember my mom bending down and burying her tree roses over winter as I grew up. It always spooked me out because it looked like we we had freshly dug graves in our front yard, those long rectangular mounds of soil. This was back in the 70’s, not sure that method’s in use any more. Will need to investigate.

Land of the Midnight Sun

10.56 pm

It’s at nights like this that I realize I live in the land of the midnight sun. Looking at the watch rather than at how dark it is outside determines bedtime.

Happy Midsummers Eve!

The Lawn

My poor lawn. And poor me. Last year I redid the back yard as you can see in this post. 

 

The harsh and  longer than usual winter (we didn’t really get any spring at all this year, it went straight from winter to summer) really took it’s toll on my lawn.

 

Quite a few weeks in I realized that I would have to basically start over on the lawn in the areas that I re-sodded last year, they were just not catching on like I had hoped.

 

The areas that needed the most attention were exactly those I re-sodded last year but I figured the whole lawn could do with some scarifying (LOVE that word!) so I called in the help of the guys that did my deck last year and helped me with the lawn and had them deliver top dressing soil and their scarifying tool.

 

After the lawn got its once over with the scarifyer (which cuts through the lawn vertically and divides thhe grass roots) I spread ut the sacks of top dressing evenly over the lawn.

 

Then I cut an opening at the ends of the sacks and dragged them along and afterwards used my broom to spread the top dressing out.

 

After that I added grass seeds to the worst off areas and kept it all moist over a couple of weeks time. Unfortunately we had NO rain during this time and I had to keep watering every night which felt pretty wasteful.

 

When not much was happening I covered the worst off areas with garden fleece pegging the corners down with tent stakes and rocks. A certain Miss Mini enjoyed that part a lot.

 

And here’s where we are at right now. There are still some very bare patches but after fertilizing with bone meal it’s all looking so much better. I think I will still add some more grass seeds in some of the bare areas and hope for a bit of rain occasionally for them to germinate but if you look at the lawn now from a frog’s perspective it’s actually not looking THAT bad. 

Ps. Wille graduates today! Yay, I'm so excited for him!