Needlework Tuesday - Sans the Actual Needlework

I haven't been doing any needlework, but I have been brainstorming some projects and gathering supplies for a number of garden related craft ideas. I should probably have done these earlier in the year when I had more time because now I'm really busy planting, mowing, weeding, watering....Working in the garden, though, has been an inspiration.  Most of these ideas are barely off the ground, but I figured I'd share them anyway. Think of them as the "before" photos.

Whirligigs: I've had this first idea for awhile.  I'm not sure where I got these fans from, but I thought they'd make cute whirligigs with a little paint. The plan is to paint them to look like flowers and stick them in the garden. I'm not a great painter, so they are going to be very crudely painted. Unfortunately, they are a bit too heavy and need a really strong wind in order to turn, which in turn knocks them over. I guess I'll have to drive them further into the ground.



Butterflies: I had this idea last year when I was looking for a long term or year-long project. I wanted to make a bunch of painted wooden butterflies to stick on the trees in our yard/forest for a touch of whimsy. I had planned to do some of them over the winter, but that didn't happen. As it turns out, it's going to be a bit tricky to cut them out, so I'm going to settle for fewer of them. Again, I'm not a great painter, so this is might turn out to be an ambitious project.



Garden Window: The idea with this one is to stick the glass gems onto an old window with silicon and place it in the garden. When the sun shines on it, the glass beads will refract (?) the light and add some interest to the garden. (from Pinterest)



Garden Board Game: This is another idea I found on Pinterest. I'm going to make a Tic-Tac-Toe game with rocks and a "slice" of wood off a log. I'll paint the rocks to resemble ladybugs and bumblebees and paint a game board on the wood.  It took me awhile to find the stones; I was looking at garden centres and at Wal-Mart. Both of which sold large bags for landscaping. However,  I only needed 20 or so. I finally stumbled upon them at the dollar store. This set here comes glued to a mesh background, which I'll just remove, but I also found a small bag of them. Score!   I think I'm going to save the prettier ones for another project that won't require me to cover them in paint. 



Chicken Wire Alliums: Another one from Pinterest. This is supposed to look like an allium, a giant onion. However, my version doesn't do it justice. First of all, I couldn't find purple spray paint. The hardware store had one, but it was so dark it didn't really read "purple". I had to settle for orange, which I love, but it's nothing like an allium. Then I used the wrong chicken wire. Mine was the 1" stuff that was too stiff to shape. I think I did okay, but it would have been easier with the 2", which is much more flexible. Then I couldn't figure out how to attach the chicken wire ball on the bamboo stake. It's supposed to be attached just at the bottom, but the ball kept flopping over. My solution to push the stake right through the ball solved that, but again it doesn't look like an allium. Oh, well. Despite all of that, I like them! I made seven of them and scattered them around a large flower bed. Whimsical, no?



Early in the spring, my husband built two window boxes to spruce up the tool and garden sheds. I painted them a couple of weeks ago, but now I hope to add a stencil to the front of them to jazz them up a bit. Yay, more painting.



I just realized that the majority of these project involve decorative painting.  Hmmmmm....I might have to revise some of these as time goes by.  With the exception of the window boxes, everything needs a coat of primer first.  Guess what I'll be doing this week?  

Finally, I've also been tinkering around with Zentangles that Heather mentioned on her blog a number of weeks ago. I don't have any good ones to show, but I really like doing them and hope to do a lot more in the future.

Needlework Tuesday is hosted by Heather over at Books and Quilts.