makin things again

 Found a lamp and having some inspiration from Cerno, I figured I'd redo this thing to something we would like! Forgot to take pics of it before destroyign it, but it was a gawdy white deco big ol lamp.

 Basically, I saved this part of the lamp, and made a simple cube with some pieces of scrap wood.

 Hole down the middle and slot out the back on the middle piece =

 This, open still.

 closed

 Then I had to make the new shade, because the shade below is from the old lamp: huge and awful

 I got some scrap material from Cerno, which is like posterboard, with one side that peels off and is sticky. Basically, I cut out the shape of the shade, and then peeled the sticky side off:

 

any oil or dirt on your hands immediately shows up on this stuff, which i learned by ruining some big shades at Cerno...

Mel had some linen, so we used that to stick to the sticky side of the poster board, slowly peeling away the sticky cover, and pressing the linen to the sticky posterboard.

All stuck in place! Next I just trimmed the linen to about half inch around the posterboard material, and then formed the cone of the lamp shade. Slowly, I hot-glued the linen up around the metal ring of the lamp shade. I am not overly good at doing this nicely, but most lamp shades actually look pretty bad I've noticed since a coworker pointed it out to me. Anyways, that was it and the product was this:

On the new nightstand

I also made Mel a tray, which she'd been wanting for a while! Again, from scrap wood, almost as always with me.

I didn't take pictures along the way, but here's the finished product. I made the four sides and the flat panel all seperate, and routed out channels for them all to fit together. I'd never done these kind of joints really, and they turned out nicely! Psyched. This thing can carry a load!

 Channels routed out show on the ends though, but oh well.

 I also made this branding iron using a bolt head. I used a dremel to carve away the material, and came up with this! It works, but it's not the best. But I'm pumped on it!

 When I went to brand the tray though, I didn't practice on anytime else, and I held it on there to long. It burned it too much. Rookie mistake. Oh well, learning.

 Umm, it was bottling day a couple weeks ago! Tried the first few this week and they are good!

 This is not really a fun day though, just lots of cleaning....

We went car camping a couple weeks ago also, up near Topanga Canyon. After some pancakes off the camp stove in the back of the car, we hiked around for a while, in search of a waterfall.

It was pretty cold though! Mel bundled up and charging away

Here she is, warming up :)

Maybe

Vest couple that day

Neato flowers

We came across this big old structure, but never found the waterfall, oh well

lost the trail

Nature is pretty cool

Vest couple, again

It was weird, at the top of the stairs here, it was easily 15 degrees warmer. it seriously hit you like you just opened an oven as you walked up the stairs. pretty awesome, ha

I took home a bunch of scrap wood from Cerno, and scrap wood from Cerno is walnut, which is freaking awesome! We have a weekly tradition going for Pizza Tuesdays right now, and the pizza stone is awesome, but it's hard to get the pizza onto the stone after we prep it, so I started making this pizza peel

After gluing it all up, I routed out an X in the underside to add in thinner strips for looks and for some support. The pizza peel is roughly a half inch thick, and sturdy.

Cut thin strips from the scraps I had to glue into the routed out X

And then sanded it all up, and oiled it with Butcher Block oil (basically mineral oil)

The X didn't come out too well. There were lots of gaps on the edges, which I filled, but it still looks cool. Never had done an inlay like that. Learning!