Chad’s birthday was a few weeks ago. I shopped and shopped, but couldn’t find anything that he might want or need. So like pretty much every other year, I had to resort to getting him lots of different kinds of beers. We enjoy the mystery cases from Goebel’s. So I got him one of those, and chose 2 six packs of random bottles from the beer wall. So I decided to get a lil crafty with the bottle caps this time. I saw something similar on Pinterest, so I thought I would give it a shot. I got a small chalk board from Michael’s for like $1.99, glued some magnets on the back and then glued on the caps.I had to glue in squares of cardboard inside the caps so I had a way to actually glue them onto the board. This got a little frustrating. I first glued them with my hot glue gun. They ended up not sticking. So I went and bought super glue thinking for sure, that that would do the trick. But I was wrong. It worked worse than the hot glue did. So I had to resort to using an epoxy. That stuff works on everything. So finally I got everything to hold in place, and voila!  Got some chalk pens, and made it a pretty beer tap menu. Although my writing isn’t the best, but oh well. It’ll do.

I started this project some months ago. It ended up being waaay more difficult than I had thought. The thumbtacks did not want to push into the plywood as easily as I’d hoped. Go figure.  After many broken tacks and two very sore thumbs later, I decided to start hammering a nail in first to make a hole then hammer in the tacks. Much, much easier but still very time consuming.  In the end it turned out well.  The tacks do poke out the back of the wood since it’s such thin plywood. I had planned on covering the back with something before hanging it, but ended up just leaning it against the wall. I was just ready for this project to finally be done.

I used a big piece of  quarter inch thick plywood that I had leftover from another project for this. I stained it with an ebony color wood stain we had lying around. It took several coats to get it the color I wanted.

I let that set for a few days until it had completely dried. Then I cut out and taped on the silhouette that I had printed at FedEx Office. You can get large black and white prints on their blueprint paper for pretty cheap.  I figured that was the way to go since my drawing skills never developed properly.

I put the tacks in around the outline, and then took the paper off. In hindsight, it would have been easier to have just traced it instead of taping it on. Some of the paper got stuck under the tacks when I took it off and it was hard to get it out. Oh well. Live and learn.

Once I got done with the outline I just had to fill it in. This. Took. Forever. Not gonna lie. I will never ever try to put this many tacks in wood again. Ever. But hey, nearly 3,300 thumbtacks and 2 very sore thumbs later, it looks good!

I made these beer glass silhouette nail and string art for Chad for Father’s Day. They were much easier than the other’s I made for Father’s Day. You can read that post for a detailed tutorial. For these I used leftover pieces of a 1″x8′ board that I had, so I used 1 inch nails instead of  the longer ones I used with the 2″x8′ boards. We ended up hanging them back behind our basement bar. Pretty snazzy.

I made these back in June as Father’s Day gifts and am just now getting around to posting about them.  I know, I’ve been slacking off. I’m a slacker. But anyways, the first one I did was the elk for my dad. It turned out better than I had expected it to since most of the new projects that I try end in failure. So I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out actually looking like it was supposed to.  I decided to make another moose one for Chad’s dad.  It was slightly easier than the elk since the elk antlers were a bit of a pain in the butt. I also made Chad some beer glass ones that we hung behind our bar.

I went to Lowe’s and got an 2″x8′ board and had them cut it into equal sized sections for me and I sanded down the rough edges when I got home.  I stained my boards with ebony colored wood stain. It’s what I had on hand, but you could use any color you want. I only put on one light coat because it didn’t want it to be too dark. Then I let that dry over night and then got to work.

I searched Google images for silhouettes of what I wanted and edited the image to make sure it would print out to be the right size for me boards. It’s okay if when you edit them image it’s low quality and really pixilated, remember that you really just need the basic shape. Then cut out the image and tape it in place.

Then the fun part. You get to smash your fingers while hammering in nails around the edge of your picture. I used 1 1/4 inch long nails. You want them to still be sticking out about 1/2 – 3-4 of an inch. I left about 1/2 inch spaces in between each nail, but put some closer together in some areas like corners so the shape would be right once I went around with the string.

Once you have all your nails in, it’s time to string it. I bought a big spool of crocheting thread from Hobby Lobby. Tie the end on to a nail and then go around each nail, looping it around so it stays tight in place.Go all the way around your picture and then loop it around the last nail.

Once your done with that, you’ll want to take off the paper, then take your string and just start zig-zagging your way across the whole thing. Make sure you loop all the way around each nail so it stays tight.

Once you’ve got it covered to your liking, just pick a nail to tie it off on, cut your thread and violi! Not too terribly difficult.  Although I had quite a crick in the neck by then time I got done.

Many of you that have ever come to our house , you’ve seen for yourselves just how horrible the front “flower bed,” or better known as the crabgrass and weed bed, has been.  It was bad. When we moved it there was a giant evergreen bush in it that was half dead and full of nasty bagworm things.  Gross.  So we had that torn out a few years back.  I attempted several times to grow plants in the flower bed. But I kill most every plant I touch. So that didn’t work out. In between planting attempts, it has just overgrown with weeds and grass. Ugly, gross mess. So Kaden and I finally fixed it this week . He helped me hoe it and get all the crap out. It was hard work.  Such a good helper.

After we got everything out, we went to Lowe’s and got that garden fabric stuff that you put down to keep weeds and stuff from coming up, and rocks. Lots and lots of rocks. We ended up going back about 10 times for more rocks.  I severely underestimated just how many bags of rocks I would need.  -_- Oh well. I now have some pretty nice arm muscles.  I ordered a solar birdbath fountain thing and put that out there with a couple ceramic pots I got off craigslist for pretty cheap.  I got a few flowers and planted them in the pots. Hopefully they last a while before I kill them.  We got all the rocks spread out, and voila, rock bed!  It’s still not as glamorous as I’d like, but since I lack plant skills, it’ll have to do.

Lately I’ve been itching to redo some old furniture, like really bad. But I didn’t have any old furniture to redo. So I found this old end table on Craigslist for 20 bucks.  A pretty good deal, I think. I realized after I got it, that it smelled really bad like old cigarette or pipe smoke. Blah.  But thank goodness all the work I did to it got rid of the stink.  Kaden helped me sand it, then I took it all apart and painted it with black satin spray paint and a coat of clear sealer. The handles a spray painted as well, and then with a sponge brush lightly brushed on a thin top coat of a tan, off white-ish color I had leftover from on the the rooms I’ve painted. I think it looks pretty stinkin’ cute.

I made these for my sister for Christmas. I can finally post about them since they’ve officially been gifted now. Yay!  My sister and brother-in-law love the movie ‘Despicable Me’, so that’s how I got the idea. Finding plain yellow onesies was the hardest part. I got all the different colored fabrics from Hobby Lobby and used fabric glue to glue them in place and then sewed around the edges.  I haven’t gotten to sew very much stuff with my new sewing machine yet, so my stitching is pretty crazy. But hooray, another sewing project success!