Jaci Dawn

Busy day today. Right now I am listening to some bluegrass music and early fireworks. Every time something explodes, poor Murphy thinks he has to go catch the perpetrator! Harvey just curls up and hopes it will all go away – soon – but Murphy runs from one end of the house to the other, barking. He isn’t afraid of the fireworks but he does get all worked up.

Happy Fourth of July!

I spent the weekend doing exactly as I wanted. I worked on little art projects all weekend.

I made two little picket fences (four to go) and put up a “lens” on Squiddo with the “how-to” instructions (shameless self-promotion here).

I tackled the question of how to make “mushrooms” and how to make something similar to those daffodil tea cups from Willy Wonka.

I stripped the paint from the glass top of the outdoor magazine rack. I picked out the design for the new “stained glass” look. I didn’t get any further with this project. Look for that in a future post.

I spent $9 on new plants (see previous post), $9 on mushroom “caps” and $24 at GoodWill selecting my “flowers”, “stems” and mushroom “stems”.

I had a pot here at home to use as a mushroom cap, too, but neglected to get a photo of it.

I prepped everything by washing and removing all the sales tags. I removed old glue and wiped all the surfaces with acetone to ensure a good contact with the glue. Then I glued everything and waited to let it set.

In the case of the glass “bell” flowers, only one day was necessary to “set” everything. The tea cup flowers took two days because I had to glue the cups to the saucer and then glue that to the the “stem” (once I knew the first glue would hold). I still plan on painting the glass bell flowers and maybe – just maybe – I will embellish the tea cup flowers.

I’m pretty pleased with the results.

The mushrooms proved a tad bit more difficult. For one thing, I wanted to fill in the space between the cap & the stem to prevent slugs and other creatures from using that space as a home. And one “stem” needed ballast.

Ballast ended up being glass “stones” for a decorative vase glued to the inside.

I assembled the mushrooms and set them aside to set. And while they were setting, we made a run to Home Depot for some other weekend needs.

Don’t you love it when the answer is dropped into your lap? What the heck is “Great Stuff” anyway? Some sort of expanding foam insulation for $3/can. I bought a can and told my husband that I wasn’t going to let anyone at the hardware store know what my intended use was. He just grinned.

And told me that it expands as you spray it, so I thought “COOL.”

Except it expands as it hardens.

Um… Not sure I wanted it to expand THAT much. Oh, hahaha! This could be interesting.

I figure, what the heck! I am going to sand it and cut it and shape it to look like “gills” anyway. And I plan on pulling out my unused airbrush to paint the final mushrooms.

So on that note, here are the not-so-final mushrooms right-side-up.

Use your imagination. Pretend they are already painted.

I can “see” them.

I am jumping the gun by showing you the raw products but I am just so excited at what I got accomplished this weekend. It makes me very hungry to do more!

See you tomorrow!

Oh – and these may not be “patriotic” but they do represent something this Nation was founded on: our right to the pursuit of happiness. I certainly was pursuing happiness today!

ttfn~