Its that time again!

 

 

I think the first time I heard the word gabion I was watching an episode of Yard Crashers a couple of years ago. I instantly fell in love with them, but had no idea how I could work them into my life (aka tiny microscopic back yard). Originally they were built to give soldiers something to hide behind so as not to get shot. It seems pretty logical, large basket type thing, fill it with rocks, no bullet holes (as long as your standing behind it). Since I among battling in a rival gang dispute my gabion is a little more on the decorative side. Oh, and here is my inspiration (it looks like the listing is no longer available), and more gabion pins are on my outdoor board!

Here's mine! I love how it turned out, and that tiny succulent is just so adorable!

 

 

Ok, now that you've see the finished product, go grab a snack because there's a lot of pictures, and probably a lot of words to go with them! First you need tools and supplies.

• Hardware cloth (wire grid stuff)
• Needle nose pliers
• Dremmel tool with metal cutting disk (not completely necessary, but very helpful)
• Large-ish river rocks (check the aquarium section at the pet store)
• A plant or candle
• Gloves (I didn't use any, obviously)

I decided the size of my planter based on the size of container I wanted to put in it. You want a minimum of two squares between your plant and the end of your gabion. Once you've decided how big the top should be go ahead and cut your first piece of hardware cloth. I know in this picture I have a top and bottom piece that are cut the same way, but after working through this I would suggest leaving the fringe wires that go past the squares you need on the piece you use for the bottom. Just to help clarify, the four on the top are my side pieces, then the bottom row are top/bottom pieces and the long one is for the tube in the center.

 

 

After you cut out your pieces you'll need to put the sides together. I started by pre bending the fringe wire to make connecting them a little easier.

 

 

Line them up like so. Oh, and excuse my grimy fingers, I had been doing this a while already.

 

 

Once you have two sides lined up like this use your needle nose pliers to bend the fringe wires around the perpendicular wire and back onto itself.

 

 

Do that to connect all four side pieces. When you're done it will probably look a little off like this.

 

 

Don't worry, once you close up that last corner it will be nice and box shaped!

 

 

Now that you have the outside done you need to save room for your plant in the middle. Grab your long piece and your top piece.

 

 

Use the fringe wires to join your long piece end to end and mould it into cylinder.

 

 

Now center you top piece on your wire cylinder. To attach them together I started with the north east south and west intersections. Wherever the wire meets up with the circle I would cut and bend the fringe wire around.

 

 

 

 

The corners here were just a little bit inside of the circle. To leave myself enough wire to wrap with I used my pliers to break the bond that holds them together before wrapping them around the cylinder piece.

 

 

Tad a!

 

 

Now that you've got the top pece put together, insert it into the box and fold those little fringe wires around just like before. I noticed that the wires in the very corners of the box were in the way, so I just cut those off with my dremmel.

 

 

Now turn it over and fill it with some rocks.

 

 

Finally, you can close the gabion up with the bottom piece. I chose to pre bend two sides of the bottom piece because the fringe wires that were not bending around the perpendicular wire that they were attached to had a tendency to break off. Bending them ahead of time seemed to minimized that a lot.

 

 

Now drop a plant (or maybe a candle if your thumbs are of the darker variety) in there and admire your handy work.

 

 

 

I'm so excited for spring to get here already, I think this will be great in the back yard. Sadly our yard is filled with snow at the moment, so no outdoor shots. :(

 

 

 

Welp, this concludes my Pinterest Challenge (winter edition) project. What did you make this time around? Wanna see more pinspired projects? Oh, and be sure to go check out all the other Pinspired projects at Young House Love, Bower Power, The Remodeled Life, and Decor & the Dog.

 

Nikki Kelly

 

Have you ever bought something that you had no idea what you were going to do with but wanted it just because it was neat? This is a story of one of those things. I bought a strand of glass bubbles from CB2 (they're no longer available, but there are tons of alternatives on etsy) forever ago just because I thought they were super neat, which they are, but once I had them I had no idea what to do with them. So they've just been sitting around for, oh, 4-5 years. Finally I saw something while I was cruising around on Pinterest one day and thought, "OMG, those little glass bubbles would be perfect for that." So before you go any further in this post check out my Pinspiration.

 

Pretty, right? So here are my glass bubbles sans fishing string that held them together, plus a lot of dust.

 

 

I just started stringing them on some of that clear nylon thread that you can get at Joann's or Michale's. it was a little tricky though because only one of the holes is big. The other hole has been drilled or something and is much tinier. It took some patience to say the least.

 

 

I just kept adding more of those little bubbles until it felt like an appropriate length.

 

Once I had enough bubbles stranded together I tied one end of the string to my closure. Actually I tied two strands to my closure, that second string is for the miscellaneous bubbles to make it more three dimensional.

 

 

See? I'm sorry I forgot to take extra pictures while I was doing this part, but basically I fed the extra thread through the first bubbles except for when I wanted to add another one. For those ones I went through the new bubble and skipped two of the exsisting ones.

 

 

It looks kinda funny laying flat on the table. Oh, and on a side note, I really hate the color of this table. I think I might paint it. It's pretty banged up looking too.

 

 

But here it is on my neck! I love how it turned out, but there's one little problem.

 

 

Before I tell you what's wrong, here's a little side view. Just look at all that bubbly goodness!

 

 

Ok, so for as happy as I look in this picture with my fancy new necklace here's the bad news. It totally broke the next day! I only got to wear it for like a day and a half!

 

 

My theory is that the smaller drilled holes might have cut the nylon thread. The hole is smooth on the outside, but there's a ridge or something on the inside that looks like it could be rough enough to cut the thread. Luckily I noticed that it was getting loose and caught it when it started falling apart, so I still have all the pieces. If there's any jewelry making buffs in the crowd today, tell me what to do! I might try getting a tiny glass drill bit to make the holes a little bigger and see if I can smooth out those ridges, but that will probably not happen for a long time... If ever. Who knows, I did really like it so maybe that will motivate me to try again. Craft fails are the worst!

 

 

Oh, and be sure to go check out all the other Pinspired projects at Young House Love, Bower Power, The Remodeled Life, and Decor & the Dog.

 

Nikki Kelly

Huzzah for Pinterest Challenges! I have been playing along since they started. For some reason I always thought they went live on Wednesdays, so that is why this post is kinda late in the Pinterest Challenge world. Not only do I like to participate in the challenge Katie and Sherry present us with, but I also like to share other Pinterest projects I embark on through out the year, click here to see them all. Soooo, what's my pinspiration this time? Well, I've mentioned it a few times over this last year, and I've even had some of my more difficult supplies on hand and ready to go since this summer. I guess I just needed this Pinterest Challenge to get me over my procrastination. My project is none other than these awesome decanter lights from Lee Broom I want to put in the dry bar!

 

 

So, this summer I kept an eye open for decanters that I could have the bottoms chopped of, just for this project. And by kept an eye open, I mean I went to the antique store.... once. Anyway, here they are in their liquid holding state.

 

 

Now, chopping the bottoms off is not as easy as one might think. I called around to probably 5 or 6 glass shops in town, each time explaining what I wanted to do, before someone finally suggested Bella Glass Studio to me. When I called they said it would be no problem. I did have to leave my decanters with them for a few days, no biggie. If you're looking to do the same I would suggest looking for a more artsy fartsy glass studio as opposed to a place that installs shower doors and such. This place even offers classes and has lost of glass for artisan types to buy. Anyway, once the decanters were cut it was all down hill from there.



By downhill I mean I still had to make something to mount to the ceiling (and therefore hide all my wires with), wire the decanters, and install the thing. So I made myself a little box yesterday. I used the same method as I did when I made this pendant light a long time ago. I also used the same wiring technique to put light bulbs inside of my decanters. The only thing I did differently was add a big washer so that my socket wouldn't come through the opening of the decanters.

 

 

Now that I had my box and my lights ready it's a matter of putting it all together. Luckily lamp stuff is pretty simple, just make sure to keep the wires that are supposed to go together, together. You might also want to tie a knot in your wire so the weight of the decanter doesn't pull on your connections or get longer than you want.

 

 

Unfortunately I didn't get the stuff to mount it to the ceiling. So just picture Matt holding it up until then, kinda like this. I bet he will stop fist pumping after five minutes, saying something about his arm falling off.

 

 

Here's a close up of the decanters to enjoy until I get it mounted to the ceiling and take proper pictures.

 

 



Until then, what was your Pinterest Challenge project this time around? Have you ever made your own light fixture? Oh and make sure to go check out the other projects from the challenge linked up at YHL, Bower Power, The Ugly Duckling House, and Our Fifth House.

 

 



 

It's that time again!!! And by 'that time' I mean Pinterest Challenge time. It's that lovely time of year where Sherry and Katie B. challenge us to actually create something that we've pinned instead of just looking. While I don't really have a hard time being motivated to recreate my favorite pins (See my Pinspired By posts for more) I just love seeing a bunch of Pinterest projects all rounded up in one place. Four places are even better (Sherry's, Katie's, Kate's, and Michelle's)! Now on to the project!





At first I thought this would be a perfect time to start my decanter light project that I mentioned here. So I called around to some local glass shops looking for someone who could cut the bottoms off of the ones I picked up a few weeks ago. After calling a handful of places with no luck, I was referred to Bella Glass Studio. When I called to ask about my bottles, they said it would be no problem. Great!





So I grabbed my bottles and drove all the way to their studio to get this project started. Once there I told them my plans and handed over the bottles. Then I asked the all important question, How long will this take? Two to three days. Well since I decided to start this project yesterday, as in the day before the deadline, I was not going to be able to really even get started. Which brings me to my back up project. Here is my pin.





I love this idea! Especially since one side of our couch is right next to the walk way and we can't really put a side table there. The only downside to this item was its price tag. I'm all for Etsy sellers making some money and all but $300 for some reclaimed wood that sits on your arm rest seems a little outrageous to me. So I did what any handy girl like myself would do. I went to Lowes and bought a board for just under $5. After measuring the width of our arm rest plus the width two boards I came up with 8". For the sides I decided to keep those lengths even and just cut two 5" pieces. Unlike the inspiration piece I decided to use a butt joint so I could use my Kreg Jigg.





After drilling my pocket holes I realized that I didn't set the actual Jigg and had to redo the pocke holes. I couldn't really be bothered with this enough to recut my pieces, and besides, no one will see them anyway. Once the pocket holes were drilled and the sides were lined up I simple drove the screws in to hold everything together.







Now that the construction part is finished its time to sand. I used some 100 grit sand paper to smooth things out nicely. I had to spend a little more time on the cut edges, but it was no biggie. Once I sanded the thing I slapped some of that left over stain I had from the butcher block countertop.







It's amazing the difference the stain has on pine and oak. The wood grain is so much more noticeable here as opposed to the countertop. I still have to put a finish on it, but here's some shots of it in use!







Seriously, this was one of the easiest projects I've ever done. If I can drive all the way across town to drop off bottles, start laying hardwood flooring in the loft, AND have time to make this thing all before Matt got home from work at 5:00 then that should tell you how easy it was. Saving $295 on something like this is pretty sweet too!



So what did you make for the Summer Pintest Challenge? Did your original plan backfire? Wanna come help me lay some hardwood floors? Oh, and come back next week and I might just have some decanter lights to show you!