Finally back to writing new stories about old stuff here at the ranch, but as a starter post to get things rerolling here, its time to document a fun little bit decor I worked up.
Way back in 2016 I found some cute candle holder thingies at a craft store that has since closed.
They sat on the downstairs mantle with some wee cacti planted in them, but those either outgrew the cups or died due to being over watered by an overzealous assistant. So I cleaned them up and set them aside and tried to think of a new way to use them.
Fast forward to one day last fall when I was tidying up the garden shed and came across some cute little copper baskets I purchased from Gardners.com. They were meant to hang with the opening at the bottom and then contain an airplant, but I never found a spot for them so they ended up hanging in the shed unused for quite a while. But after looking at them again, I came up with a plan.
First I painted the baskets as the bare wire had oxidized and was no longer so bright and cheery. Then I dug up some unused doll rods, washers and some of the old large nuts that were once used along with a length of nylon rope to provide a guideline in the pool (before we had it redone.) I sprayed the assemblies with a couple coats of polyurethane and let them sit and then I had some little flower-like things that can sit securely in the glass cups with the aid of some pretty glass pebbles.
Small problem though. There were only six baskets and I had eight glass cups to fill and I couldn’t order any more wire baskets as they’re no longer in stock.
So I had to get even more creative.
I had a couple of round bits of styrofoam squirreled away and two bags of little pompoms I’d picked out of a craft store clearance rack years ago for a dollar. So I painted the styrofoam and then undertook the rather tedious task of hot gluing the pompoms onto quarter lengths of toothpicks and, once they cured, glueing the other end of the toothpicks into the styrofoam.
Finally I took some of the boys’ dropped feathers and after some careful math and measuring, inserted them into the edge of the styrofoam disks.
The end result is a pair of stylized feather-flowers. I used two more nuts/washers/doll rod assemblies to get them to also sit securely in the glass cups.
And now the funny little candle holders are back on the mantle in the downstairs area of the great room, but where instead of wee lumpy cacti that got kind of lost in the space, they provide a bit of color and pop to the room.
