I’ve been extremely busy the last couple months (good for me), so I’m just getting back to blogging! I promised in my last blog post to create a couple of tutorials. There was one to be on forming hardware cloth and another on using recycled asphalt shingles for miniature garden accessories.Continue reading
Tag Archives: recycling
Papercrete Fairy’s Castle Cottage Almost Finished
The Fairy’s Castle Cottage was one of the first batch of papercrete fairy houses for this season (2014). Creating the molds, forming the papercrete, waiting for the ‘crete to cure, and dry, are only a small part of the fairy house building process. Like building an actual house, the finish work takes the longest.Continue reading
Catching Up . . .
I’ve had the flu and been out of commission the last few weeks, so I’m taking a day to catch up the Blog with the papercrete fairy house projects. Some of the fairy houses were pretty cut-n-dry to develop. They were hand formed over disposable food containers, un-molded after set, dried, painted, and embellished.Continue reading
Hobbit Haven Finished
Sorry to leave you folks hanging. I was sick, busy, and . . . never mind. Here are a couple of photos of the finished hobbit house, a.k.a., one of the flopped hobbits.Continue reading
Experimental Papercrete Hedge Growth Results
For those of you awaiting the results of the experimental Hobbit Haven Hedge growth results, here ya go!Continue reading
Papercrete Fairy House Hedge Growth
I already have a few hours invested in Hobbit Haven and wasn’t happy with any painted options that I imagined for the top of the house. I wanted dimensional “hedge growth”, so I’m trying a technique of soaking fabric in cement slurry (watery cement). The idea is that the cemented fabric can be draped over an object, formed as needed, and then left to cure and dry.Continue reading
Never Give Up!
The hobbit houses LIVE . . . the flopped hobbits didn’t flop!!Continue reading
Waiting Game
As I suspected, the Hobbit houses didn’t do very well. It took two days before I could remove them from the molds, and they might collapse anyway. They’re still wet, fragile, and spongy. I’m afraid this batch failed! I’m letting them set out to see if they will harden up any, or just flop. Either way, I can’t use them. I learned a lesson (or two), so it wasn’t a complete waste of time and materials . . . disappointing though!Continue reading
Fairy Houses Formed
The R2D2-like mold was made from disposable plastic containers, Easter egg half, foam packing material, shopping bag, tape, and a straw. It yielded an “Angry House” once formed with papercrete. The pattern of the roofline made it appear a bit ticked-off, but I liked it, so I left it. The papercrete felt really good and I have high hopes for this one!Continue reading
Soda Can Gates
My experiments with punching out intricate gate designs from aluminum soda cans, using the die-cutting/embossing machine, were a bit trying:Continue reading