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Solar Jars

8/2/2013

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I found a dustbin full of empty clean jars in my garden.  We don't have a blue box that the council provide to take them away - must request one soon - and it's too much hassle to drag them over the recycling bank as we don't have a car.  So, I decided to see what we could do with some of the before we get our blue box.

On sorting out the jars I found a number of jars that were the same shape and size with the same lids.  There were very nice small jars with little gold lids and I thought "tea light holders".  But I'm a lazy person, and with 20 of these jars, I know what I wouldn't be willing to go around lighting 20 tea lights.  So the next best thing sprung to mind, "solar lamps".  I discovered mini solar panel or solar cells are quite hard to come by and quite expensive.  So I trotted off to Homebase and found these.  A small cost, but all the other materials were free or pre-existing so I was willing.

I took the light mechanism off, replace the jar lids with it and painted the jars and lids my colours.  Luckily the lids were of the same circumference, not something I checked before hand....phew, so just popped on top of the jars.

I really like the way you can see the paint strokes, and from a distance it looks like a wet surface.
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Garden Table

7/18/2013

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In our garden we have a corner plant space.  This built in plant box has convenient corners which are perfect for sitting on.....but alas there was nowhere to put your drink whilst sitting in the sun.  So off I trotted to B&Q, picked up some banister wood and some decking.  Cut the banister wood in half and took off the annoying sloped ends, sanded them down and nailed them onto my decking.....bazinga - table!
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Herb Garden

7/11/2013

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Whilst clearing out my garden shed I found some hideous, yet in perfectly good condition, plant pots.  I recently saw a post here about making chalkboard paint, and thought "labelled pots".  Each pot is painted and the labels are just drawn on with chalk, so I can change the labels as I change the contents of the pot.

So how do you make chalkboard paint?
You need:
- acrylic paint
- grout
- something to paint (in this case plant pots)

How do you do it?
Mix half a cup of acrylic paint with one table spoon of grout.  


These measurements always confused me - there are too different sizes of cup to define a cup!  I think only in the USA do thy work frequently with the measurements.  I have spent hours trying to find conversions, but then I found scoops with the measurements on them in Pound Stretcher!  WIN!!


Once you've mixed enough to remove all lumps, paint your something.  You have to paint rather quickly as the grout causes the mix the dry quickly.


As you may see from the top photo that pint acrylic paint was measured out.  "But all your pots are blue!" The pink paint was thick and the lumps couldn't be removed, and the mixture wouldn't spread, but if you leave the paint in the sun for a while it thins out enough to work perfectly.
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