June project

In June, I worked on making a bench.

Bench 1b

 

I chose the simplest bench pattern out there for some instant gratification; this style is called the Aldo Leopold bench. The parts were acquired from Home Depot’s 70% off rack + my random stash. I used Sector67’s woodworking shop to cut my lumber down to spec.

Total time spent building the thing: 30 minutes.
Total time spent sealing the thing: way more than 30 minutes.
Time spent walking it down a 1/2 mile long, bumpy, overgrown road: I don’t want to talk about it.

It will be interesting to see how well this holds up outdoors.

Art Every Day – Day 49 – EDIBLE art!

Years ago my parents gave me a plastic bottle intended for making pancakes easy. I never actually tried it until *today* — and in among spirals and an accidental turtle pancake came this little robot dude!

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I couldn’t decide which of these two photos to post, so you get TWO photos of the robot pancake – one with and one without the most awesome WI-shaped cast iron pan.

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Thanks to Jesse for encouraging some pancake drawing beyond just spirals!

 

Two Mandalas

Last year I briefly played around with mandalas.

 

First on rocks:

 

Later in glass:

 

 

There might be one more made of a third kind of material coming out in 2016.

Patio in progress

I am assembling a small cement patio for under the wisteria trellis.

Cement patio in progress

So far, it’s made of 1 cement stepping stone I made as an example for a class I taught, and the bricks are found bricks (some people throw away perfectly good bricks!). I might have to break down and buy some bricks to finish this… My pile-o-scraps is not really working to fill this out into a nice rectangle right now

Fancy soap

Soap

 

After failing to make cupcakes/muffins with these molds (seriously, it was a disaster), I relegated the silicon molds for SOAP.  I think they turned out beautifully.  I’m not sure where I fall on the love/hate homemade soap spectrum, but I’m glad I tried it at least once.