More Chaos!

 So I have continued to work on my chaos deck. 

One of my trades showed up with the cards inside a cute greeting card with a wolf on it, and I was so pleased by it that I decided to turn it into a tarot card. All I did was glue the card shut, trim it down to tarot size and add some contact paper for a back.

His name is Happy Wuffie and he is a reminder to find happiness in your connection to nature and how important it is to do that. I love him.

Shortly after this in my Alley group someone posted a video of them making tarot cards out of book pages which was exactly as simple as making my Wuffie had been. I immediately knew I was in trouble. 

That next Sunday afternoon while Stu had a nap I went to the thrift store and bought myself a decent stack of art books and children's books and greeting cards. I even found a "Natural Momma's Affirmation Deck" that I thought might be an oracle deck, turned out to just be cards about being positive about your pregnancy with facts on the back of the cards. Useless as a deck, perfect as cardstock bases for the massive number of cards I was about to make.

After that I went through all my books and picked out the art I liked. There was an airbrush art book that had a LOT of good stuff, and an impressionist painting book that was cool, plus some Little Mermaid and Catwings and various fairytale books that gave me some great art. I had some spray adhesive, I'd spray the art, glue to half a greeting card, cut out, add a back and then trim to tarot size.

For the backs I used some contact paper, but I also picked up a decent amount of Cricut vinyl, since that's my preferred material for card backs, self adhesive, sturdy, flexible and thin. I would just match the card art to the back and stick it on. I did have to do it carefully, I would lift the backing up just a little across the top, line the card up with the top and press just the top down to attach it, then I could slowly peel the backing off and press it onto the card as I worked my way down to make sure there were no bubbles or wrinkles. 

To avoid wasting vinyl I would cut the card close to tarot sized before adding it, and then do the final trimming and shaping once it was backed so everything matched perfectly. I just used my guillotine paper cutter and my corner punch from my deck trimming projects for this, it was pretty easy.

I immediately got into a rhythm and just churned out card after card after card. It was the perfect crafting satisfaction project, since each card was satisfying and it only took a few minutes to do one.

(Ignore the cards on the bottom row of the last picture, those were leftovers of the oracle deck, these were the pictures I used for posting trades.)

And this isn't even close to all of them. I counted, and in the end I made about 72 cards. Which does tell me I could easily make a whole deck by hand for myself. 

AND that isn't even as many as I planned to make, I have a whole stack of art glued to cut up greeting cards that didn't finish the process because I basically decided I'd had enough of card making for the moment. I'll probably go back to those later.

I realized that this would be too many cards for my chaos deck, so I decided I would keep my favorites and use the rest for trades. Which ended up being wildly successful, people loved my cards and the trading frenzy was exhilarating and exhausting. But I'm very close to having at least one version of all the cards for my chaos deck, and if I don't get it in trades I'll just make a few more cards to fill any empty slots.

And of course, in the process of all this, I needed somewhere to store all these cards. And the deck would need a deck box. In the thrift store run among the greeting cards I had picked up a sturdy cardboard box that had once held a fancy set of nice Van Gogh greeting cards that I was using for storage.

It's a nice little box, thick cardboard, magnet at the front to hold it closed. However, it was pretty torn up on the corners, and I was very, very rapidly filling it up with my chaos deck. I checked with some spare cards roughly guessing how many I had in the mail still that hadn't arrived and I thought it MIGHT be possible they'd all fit, but ONLY if they were very thin, and that was unlikely. Being as the design of the box was a little pastel for my taste anyways, this box was gonna get a major overhaul.

So I knew I wanted to make it taller so it would hold more cards. I figured I could just add some wooden strips to the lid to make it thicker, I was planning to add a clasp and hinges as well. 

I apologize for the lack of in progress pictures, it just wasn't really complicated enough that I felt like I needed to. 

First off, I removed the lid. It was just held on by paper on the front and back, so that was just the work of the slice of an exacto knife. 

For the additions, I had some thin craft wood that I had to glue two layers together to make it thick enough to match the box, and then I just cut the pieces to size on my table saw, measuring to match the dimensions of the box lid. I made them about as wide as my yardstick, I figured that would be enough space. Then I just glued them on. 

I was SO pleased with how well I sized these, they fit EXACTLY to the lid and each other.

I also constructed a heavy carboard inner box thing for the bottom half to hold more cards without them sliding out when I opened the box.

This was just heavy cardboard I cut to fit inside the box and extend upwards a bit. The painter's tape was just to hold it together, but I ended up leaving it on and just covering it, it would have complicated assembly if the pieces didn't hold together. 

The PERFECT fit of the lid over this inner box just gave me goosebumps. My precise fit was honestly a thing of beauty. 

Next up was covering everything in pretty paper, obviously this bare wood, bare cardboard, painter's tape and torn printed paper wasn't a good look.

I started with the inside, using a dark splotchy patterned paper. I have a preference for dark interiors for boxes.

This was just a very careful, precise, tedious process of very carefully trimmed and glued in paper. It was not super difficult, just required going very slowly and being precise. More perfect fitting. 

Next up was the outside. I had a nice worn brick printed paper that I used for that, and I planned to add a clasp and hinges, like I said, and I also decided I wanted some nice metal corner protectors on the lid, and feet for the bottom. Found all that at the craft store.

So I covered the outside of the boxes, gave them a coat of mod podge and then added the hardware. 

In the end, I got this:

I love the way it turned out. The worn brick paper has a perfect Alleyman look, and the hardware matches perfectly. I added glue to all the hardware before screwing it in just because I wasn't 100% positive the screws were secure being screwed mostly into cardboard. 

I thought I would add more embellishment to it but I cannot come up with anything I want to add to it. I could maybe see myself adding stickers in a chaotic way if I found stickers I thought felt right. But that's the kind of thing I would add organically as I found them. I think it's good as it is for now. It's a teensy bit tough to open and close with how snugly the lid fits over the inner box but it works just fine. And now I have space for plenty of cards for my chaos deck in my lovely chaos box.

Tarot: More Chaos Than I Thought

 So. I'm a pretty serious sucker for Tarot Kickstarters. I've backed many and every single one has been kind of a wonderful experience, whether I'm supporting an artist I already love, or impulse backing a pretty thing like I'm a goddamn crow that MUST HAVE THE SHINY THING.

That's it. That's me. MUST HAVE THE SHINY THING.

You get to give your money directly to the artist, and you get all kinds of crazy fancy extras that no one else gets, and a lot of times you're getting a deck that only a few hundred people will have. Plus you're usually not spending NEARLY what everything you get would be worth at a retail price, which a lot of times won't even be an option if you don't back the Kickstarter. I LOVE the specialness of backing a Kickstarter for a tarot deck.

Anyways.

I stumbled across this one. it originally claimed to be a 133 card ONE TIME ONLY printing of an insane chaos deck where all of the cards were pulled from different decks, just a wild collection of cards and that whole idea fascinated me. So I backed it. Showed it to Rachel and she backed it too.

Side note: when I backed it, it was the first day and it was only about half funded at the time and I was worried about it not getting funded, so I shared it with my tarot trading groups on Facebook, who then proceeded to ruin EVERTHING by being as terrible as people always are on the internet, there was criticisms of the artist for their "High" base level goal, and then criticisms for how they were using the money and it just got too negative for me so I deleted my post. Why internet people gotta suck so much?

Anyways.

For your information, it's called the Alleyman's Tarot and this is the Kickstarter: 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/713books/the-alleymans-tarot?ref=user_menu

The lore around it is kind of wonderful and I just love it. And despite my worries it went on to be backed by about 19000 people and make $1.4 million dollars to become the most backed and most funded tarot project of all time. It was super exciting to watch and I loved being part of it. 

After the Kickstarter ended, there was a Facebook group that sprung up for backers of the deck, and people were actually breaking up decks and swapping cards to create their own random chaos decks with other members of the groups and I was completely blown away by this idea. The thought of breaking up a deck was so foreign to me it didn't even make sense. At first I had no interest in participating in the trading, I could never break up any of my decks, although I did have a small collection of random tarot cards, replacements I had ordered from other decks, an extra that came with another deck I purchased, alternate versions I had printed for my self created decks, things like that. 

Originally I thought I'd just add those to my Alleyman's deck, but then. Last weekend, Clover and I were thrift store shopping and I just happened to stumble across an oracle deck for a few bucks that I picked up and immediately offered for trades. So now I am building a chaos deck of my own and I am completely intoxicated with the idea of the universe bringing me a deck. 

My Alleyman's tarot Facebook group has been very active, and a little while ago, someone made a post about how they already collected wine bottle labels and pointed out that they could very easily be used as tarot/oracle cards. This immediately brought to mind my Prophecy wine bottle collection. I have had a habit of saving cool looking wine bottles for some time, and these ones had Tarot art on the labels. I used to line to tops of my cupboards with them, but it's been quite a while since my cupboards have had enough space for wine bottles on top. And now that I've bought a house that's not likely to change. 

However, these wine label collectors pointed me to techniques to cleanly remove wine labels and I decided it was time to turn my Tarot wine labels into actual Tarot cards. It's what I always wanted them to be anyways and it will free up some shelf space if I don't have to store bottles.

So, the process was really very straightforward. I read about chemicals and cleaners and sticking the bottles in the oven, but the method that seemed least likely to damage the label was filling the bottle with boiling water.

I just boiled water in the teapot and funneled it in, I had to be careful because the boiling water would bubble in the funnel and splatter, which was quite hot. I also had to use a hot pad to handle the bottle because, FUN FACT, if you fill a glass bottle with boiling water it makes EVERYTHING VERY HOT. 

Weird.

After just a few minutes with the hot water, the adhesive softened and melted enough for me to get my fingernail under the corner of the label and gently peel it off. I had to be careful, I had a few small rips that had to be glued back in place once I was done but in the end it was successful enough. I had all six varieties of Prophecy wine, I removed the labels, glued them to some basic posterboard, and then I spent a great deal of time fishing through my scrapbooking paper stash to try to find paper that would match the labels, since as wine bottle labels they weren't exactly standard Tarot card sized. I feel like I did a pretty good job matching them up with paper, and I'm pretty pleased with how they came out.

As you can see, I have the Fool, a Pinot Noir that was unremarkable, the Lovers, a red blend that was pretty good, the High Priestess, a Sauvignon Blanc that I honestly don't remember, the Emperor, a Cabernet Sauvignon that I was just happy wasn't terrible after my past experience with cabs, you never know what will happen, the Star, a Pinot Grigio that I probably mixed with ginger ale just because that's what I prefer to do with Pinot Grigios, and a Rose, that was fine, but I'm just not into roses. So as you can see, I was unimpressed by the wine, but really, I was just there for the art.

But I think I did a pretty damn good job of finding paper to match the cards. I cut them out roughly with scissors and then used my guillotine paper cutter to trim them down to JUST BARELY SLIGHTLY larger than a tarot card. I then got my hands on some textured gold Cricut vinyl that I cut out and stuck to the back of the cards, then trimmed down to make the cards exactly the right size. Since I'd made the cards JUST BARELY SLIGHTLY larger, once I had the backs on I could trim everything down to the right size and the backs would match perfectly, including corner rounding with my corner rounding punch. 

After some debate with myself I ended up coating the fronts with my satin finish polycrylic spray I happened to have leftover from Battleshots. I didn't want a glossy finish, but I also didn't want to dull the metallic gold highlights of the label art. The satin finish did exactly what I wanted it to do. I ended up very happy with what I'd done so of course I had to share what I'd done with both my Alleyman's tarot facebook group and my tarot crafting group. For like a day I felt like the most popular person on the internet based on the absurdly enthusiastic response I got to my post. last count, over 200 responses. My cards are gorgeous, and I'm proud of myself.

AND THEN.

Some darling admirer of my work points out that there are in fact SEVEN varieties of Prophecy wine.

WHAAAAAAAT.

He informs me it's a buttery Chardonnay and the art on it is the Empress. Now, after a bad, BAD experience with a buttery Chardonnay in a Bota Box that was so bad that the only way to drink it was to mix it to the point I couldn't taste it, I was not looking forward to trying another buttery Chardonnay. But the Empress is my soul card, I must have it.

Turns out the wine itself wasn't hard to find, I stopped at an Albertsons earlier today and it was just there, easy fuckin' peasy. Honestly, drinking it was harder. I've had worse wines. I wasn't mad that I was drinking it, but I wasn't happy either. I tried to add some lemon, thinking that would brighten up the flavor a bit, and that was a mistake, the lemon clashed horribly and actually made it worse. It was bad. So I drank it straight and just decided to be okay with it. I found some matching paper, and gave it the same treatment as the other labels.

I love her. She's so elegant and beautiful. Even if her wine was bad.

The debate I'm having now is that I have edged the cards in a Zig calligraphy pen that claims to be "Gold". But......

That...... barely qualifies as gold. I am considering re-edging in the gold paint pen I used on my Zelda deck, but I realize that will create a gold microborder, so I haven't decided if that's a good idea yet. Maybe I'm overthinking it.

Whatever.

Regardless, I now have 7 self created tarot cards for my chaos deck created from some of my favorite wine labels and decorative paper I have had since the early 2000s. These cards are special and I love them. 

Aaaaaaaaaaand now I look at every bottle of wine wondering if it would make a good tarot card.....

Bath Tray!

 So, THIS is the slightly larger project I've been working on. 

For Christmas Rachel gave me a book about ritual bathing in tune with the lunar cycle. Man, I love how delightfully witchy that sounds. Anyways. I love the book and have decided to work my way through it's list of different herbal baths. I've started collecting herbs and oils and salts and whatnot, and I decided I needed some accessories to increase my comfort while in the tub to increase the amount of time I could stay in the tub.

After the expense of my Battleshots project, I really wanted to keep this low cost. I had a little bath pillow but I wanted a full size bath cushion to pad my back and hips.  I was able to cash in some points for a gift card on Amazon and bought myself this cushion:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071YQG8R3/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It came with a konjac sponge and a carrying bag and after a test run full moon bath last week I can confirm it makes my sitting in a tub much more comfortable.

The other important accessory I needed was a bath tray, a place to set candles and my phone and a glass of wine. (Obviously.)

Sure, you can buy them but damn I didn't want to drop another $50 on a tray. And I also knew that I had a pretty good selection of wood and hardware from old projects, as well as a decent sized plank of wood and a selection of trims and wood scraps my mom had left in the garage, not to mention leftover stain and polycrylic spray for a top coat. I was pretty sure I could come up with supplies to make a bath tray just from what I had on hand. So I set an optimistic goal of not spending any money on this project, and started making plans. 

First of all I started looking for tutorials and feature ideas. In the end I didn't really feel like I needed a tutorial, everything was pretty simple, I just needed to figure out what I wanted on my tray. The two main things I needed were a wine glass holder and a phone holder for the ability to watch a show or something while in the tub. If possible I also wanted a hook or holder or something on the edge of the board to hang a towel on so I could easily dry my hands to use my phone. I found a few ideas I liked:

So, sure, I could just do a flat plank of wood, it would do the job, but that's boring.

This one had my original idea for the wine glass holder, a notch with a circle cut around it. I have a jigsaw, I could easily cut that notch. I wasn't sure how I'd do the circle though, I don't really have the right tools to do that easily. And as I continued thinking about this, I imagined a stem of a wine glass hanging down from the tray, and with my long legs there's like a zero percent chance I don't at some point crash my knees into that hanging stem resulting in a tragedy of spilled wine and potential broken glass in the tub. I needed a new plan.

I thought about the little candle holders on the far end too, but I use candles of all sorts of sizes and didn't want to have set candle sizes.

I didn't really feel like I needed a book or tablet holder like this one, I don't own a tablet and any time I get a book near a tub I have nightmares about dropping it in the tub and ending up with an unrecoverable block of sodden paper. (And yet it's easier for me to bring my $800 electronic phone to the tub? WHAT?) But I really liked the outlined square for the candle there in the corner. Not necessarily for a candle, but to hold a wine glass. This would solve the hanging stem problem. I also liked the raised edge all around the borders to keep things from sliding off. I still had a pile of 1/2" square dowels I had bought thinking I might use them to extend the edges of the panels on my Battleshots to reach the edges of the center frame, but ended up not doing that. I didn't see any reason to return the dowels, you never know what you'll find a use for, and here we go. Those would be perfect to add the wine glass square and the border.

This one had the towel holder I wanted, just have the board extend past the tub and cut a hole in it, I love that. I can do that, my jigsaw is meant for that. 

I just like the aesthetic of this one, the darker wood and the white mandala. That's how I decided I wanted to decorate mine. Not sure how I was going to manage the design with my no spending plan, but I could probably make a stencil for it. 

The last problem I had was a mount for my phone. I looked at a dozen different ideas for building phone holders, or just routering a notch in the board that it could sit in, but the problem was everything had the phone tilting pretty far back, and I want to be able to sink down into the tub and still see my phone, without it being in danger of ending up in the tub. The closest I got was an idea to add popsicle sticks to a mini easel to make a rest for the phone, but even then, the angle was still wrong and I just didn't like my phone sitting loose like that. I tried to bring my creative mind in and design something, but I just got nowhere. And then I found this:

That, if you can't tell, is a smartphone adapter for a camera tripod screwed directly into the board. And that's....... that's just perfect. It's exactly what I want. The straight on angle, the clamping of the phone in place, it's everything I want. There was no way I could build anything that perfect. 

And thus, my no spend goal died. HOWEVER. I did find one for only $5, so really, I'm still not doing too badly. Although that did lead to me buying a stencil for the design in resignation. Since the rule was broken anyways, why not make my decorating plan a little simpler. 

I should also note, I loved the handles on this idea but I utterly refused to buy handles for mine. I happened to have a stockpile of old drawer knobs, a very long time ago I had replaced all the drawer knobs on my daughter's dresser with pink crystal diamond knobs. She had outgrown and replaced them, but I saved them. With the help of a gold paint pen I painted them to make them fit my aesthetic a little more and figured I would attach them at the end to give something to grab onto to lift the tray.

I also TECHNICALLY broke my no spend rule here, but I'm not counting it. The screws that came with these knobs would not be long enough to reach through the board and the trim, so I went out and bought some longer screws. However, after a minor side project where I bought a hardware organizer and sorted out my stockpile of screws and nails and washers I've been building for years from hardware leftover from build it yourself furniture, I found that I actually already had some screws that were the perfect length for this. So I'm NOT COUNTING the like $2 I spent on the screws, even if it was only $2. I used the screws I already had, and the ones I bought are unrelated and will be saved for something else. 

So. I had an idea for the design, now it was time to build. 

My first idea involved the mug rack I made myself when I lived in the apartment I was in previously. I have more cupboard space than I know what to do with in my house so there has been no need for the mug rack and really, nowhere for it to go, so it had just been sitting unloved in the garage. I decided I would repurpose it for this project. 

I spent an ungodly amount of time removing all the hooks, those got their own drawer in my hardware organizer, I suppose I'll never need to buy a hook to hang things on ever again! I then briefly attempted to disassemble the pallet without cutting the boards, because the width of the pallet ended up being exactly the length I wanted to have the board extend out for my towel slot, I figured I could just dowel and edge glue probably three board together to get the width.

Well, trying to yank those nails out got old FAST. God, that was hard. I got one board out and immediately decided that sucked. I got out my jigsaw and cut the boards away from the end pieces, then all I had to do was pry them off the center board which wasn't quite so bad. Still a pain though. I figured I'd just add some short boards vertically to the end to make it long enough. 

Anyways, got the boards all separated. I went through them and picked out the three straightest nicest looking boards, which was not easy, pallet boards are pretty messy. I then spent a freaking eternity sanding the boards to remove the paint I had put on it for it's mug rack form, and also to smooth out the horrible roughness of the boards. I had sanded them a little when I made it in to a mug rack, but not nearly enough. I knew I would probably not have the patience to sand all the paint off, so I probably wouldn't be able to stain this, it would need to be painted over, but I was fine with that.

After that I lined up and drilled some dowel holes and started working on gluing the boards together. But almost immediately I was in trouble. The first two boards cupped inward dramatically while they were clamped and gluing. I tried to get the third board straighter, but it was still badly curved. 

I tried to fix it by clamping the board glued boards to my workbench to force it to be flat and just left it sitting there for like two days, which did help, but it was still pretty warpy. Maybe if I had a planer I could have fixed it? But I could tell I was setting myself up for a world of frustration working with this warpy wavy board. And maybe not going to end up with a great surface for setting lit candles and large glasses of liquid on.

I don't know how well you can see the wave, but it seems pretty wavy to me. You can see it's unevenness better in person, when you set it on a flat surface it's got an awful lot of rock back and forth. It could be worse I suppose, but still didn't seem steady for the things I want to set on it.

At this point, I started thinking about the rather large plank of wood my mom had left in the garage. It was probably five feet tall and a little less than three feet wide, with some random jaggedy parts sticking off of it from whatever what cut out of it originally. I would probably save myself a huuuuuuuuuuuuuge amount of frustration and heartbreak if I just cut myself a rectangle out of that and started over. And I could do it, I'm not afraid of my table saw anymore!

Also, side benefit, since it was a nice clean plank of wood with no paint already on it, it would then allow me to just stain the wood instead of having to paint it, which is what I really wanted anyways. Painted would be fine, but most of my inspiration pictures were stained wood and I really preferred that look. Plus I had leftover stain from Battleshots!

So I rejected the pallet board contraption. Maybe I'll find another use for those pallet boards. Cutting out a new rectangle was a little difficult, big boards on the table saw are awkward, but I handled it. And come to find out, that little under 3 feet width was just the perfect width to span the tub and hang over a few inches. It was PERFECT for the towel rack. One cut for width, trim the uneven end to make it square and it was perfect. 

If you want to know, in the end my board was 33 1/2" long and 11 3/4" wide, and 1/2" thick. This was the maximum width I could get based on the weird jaggedy cuts that were already in the board. It was a very random scrap of wood. 

This is what the board looked like after I cut off my piece, the arrow is pointing to the end I cut off. I have absolutely no idea what kind of wood it was either, so if you were curious, I can't help you.

Also, keep in mind if you're making your own, this is sized for my tub and my preference. Get your own measurements. Mine most likely won't work for you. 

Obviously I had to start by sanding the ever loving hell out of it, I have no idea how long this board had been in the garage, it was a bit rough and very dirty. Sanding solved all of that. It was at this point that I realized that this board was actually slightly warped as well, but this was more of a just gentle arch across the length of it. Probably wouldn't cause any major issues, and hell, if I had the arch go upwards on the top side then the warm water below the board plus the things I will regularly set on it could counteract that arch after a little time. I wasn't worried.

So, the first construction thing I wanted to do was add bumpers on the bottom. It's important to add some strips of wood or something to the bottom parallel to and right up against the edges of the tub to keep the board from turning sideways and falling in the tub. Lucky for me, I had kept the scraps I had cut from the middle of the boards I used to make the boats for Battleshots. And I even had the pieces that had the failed router cuts that probably wouldn't be useful for anything else, but this was a great use. And the 8" pieces from the 4 space boats were just the perfect length. It was so perfect.

I feel like I'm saying perfect a lot. Am I saying perfect a lot?

So I took my board and laid it across the tub. I then grabbed my little piece of bumper wood, held it up to the bottom of the board and pushed it up so it was against the tub edge, and then marked the edge of the bumper I could reach. I did this on both sides. When I flipped the board over I could line the bumpers up with the line I drew and outline the whole bumper piece to mark exactly where I wanted it to go. I just measured to center it vertically. 

I also used this opportunity to mark where the outer edge of the tub hit the underside of the board so I could mark the place I would cut the hole for my towel holder.

I realized I needed to cut the towel hole before gluing the bumpers, they'd probably get in the way. I actually used a nearby paint stirrer to mark the hole I wanted to cut, based on available space that was actually a perfect width. I drilled holes in the corners and used my jigsaw to cut the rectangle out. It was rough and a little messy, and I got way more tear out than I thought I would, but after sanding it wasn't too bad. I did have a few torn out holes I patched with wood filler. 

Once that was done and sanded, I just glued and clamped the bumpers in place. Maybe I should have screwed them in? Plenty of other tutorials did, but I just didn't really want to. And really, they're not going to take a lot of abuse, it's just for safety. Glue will be fine I'm sure. And if I'm wrong, I suppose I'll screw them back on when they fall off.

And this is what I had at this point. Obviously the bumpers area not evenly placed, the far edge of my tub is pretty narrow, and the board hangs off the close edge.

There's a close up of a bumper and the towel holder. Or the handle, as it came to be known after this point. I find it hilarious that my bumpers just have a random routered channel, there's literally no reason for it in this project, it's just the condition my scrap wood. And of course I wanted to glue the flat side down, more surface area for glue security.

The handle is a little curvy, but you know what, I don't care. It's good enough. It's function will have it mostly covered in a towel when in use anyways. You can see my wood filler patches too. I knew they wouldn't stain with the wood, but I'd deal with that later.

Next up was the railings around the edge and the wine glass space. I basically just lined up the dowels on the board and cut them to length. I got the measurements for the wine glass space by straight up placing my biggest stemless wineglass on the board and marking the lengths. I figured a stemless glass will have a wider bottom than a stemmed glass, so that would make sure any of my glasses would fit. I did test fit a stemmed glass as well. After that it was just glue and clamp.

Definitely had to clamp, the dowels were straight and this step made it pretty clear my board definitely wasn't.

This actually took a few days to do, the curved board meant both the long edge dowels needed to be clamped very thoroughly and I only have 5 clamps. That picture is after the clamped long edge sat overnight and I moved two clamps to glue the end piece. Those didn't need as much attention since that's not where the curve is. If you look you can see the slight arch on the close edge. You can also see that it's not really that bad.

When everything was glued down, we had this:

I also marked where I was going to be drilling holes for the knobs and the phone mount. 

While I was gluing these dowels down, I needed something else to work on. I mentioned that I did pick up a stencil for the design I planned to do, I found this at Walmart:

That stencil on top was exactly what I wanted. However, I wanted the image to be slightly cut off on the bottom, and since I would be attaching the railing around the edge before staining, it would not be possible to just hang the stencil off the edge of the board, it would need to be cut. Now, here's the thing. I love that stencil. I do not want to cut it and make it unusable for anything else. So obviously my solution was to make a copy of it. That's not unnecessarily tedious, I don't know what you're talking about.

So I traced the stencil onto some posterboard and spent an evening cutting it out with an xacto knife.

I think it turned out pretty good.

So what if my finger was sore and bruised for two days after? It's fine. It's fiiiiiiiiiiiiiine.

Art is pain.

I thought about returning the stencil set after making my copy to try and fix some of my no spending violations, you know, kinda pirate the stencil. But honestly, I really like those stencils. I'm keeping them.

After this, there was another round of sanding to get the railings perfectly flush with the board edge and to round off some sharp corners, particularly on the towel holder, and we were ready to stain. 

I had like a quarter of a can of the Golden Oak stain from Battleshots and a teensy bit of Early American stain from the record racks I made for Stu for his birthday, so I got crazy and just mixed them together. I wanted a darker wood color than I had, so I figured that would help, and I'd just do a lot of coats. 

I believe this was about three coats. Obviously the filler isn't taking the stain but I expected that. And the wood took the stain in kind of an odd leopard print kind of way, but I'm not mad. I wonder what would have happened if I'd used a prestain conditioner? I should try that someday.

There were a few places where wood glue had gotten on the surface and blocked the stain, so I had to sand and restain in a few small places, but it wasn't a big deal. 

And this is where it ended up. I think this was five or six coats? I honestly can't remember if I did a sixth or not. It's not the most even stain job in the world, but my experience with Battleshots is that it seems to even off over time. I let it sit for a few days after this picture was taken and it did help. 

As you can see in this, I also had drilled holes for the knobs and the phone mount. 

For the knobs it was as easy as just marking the center and drilling, but I decided I wanted to countersink the bottom so the screw wasn't sticking out. Unfortunately I do not have countersink drill bits. So I just drilled the pilot hole and then used a larger drill bit to drill a shallow hole around it. I slipped and drilled it too deep on one side and had to sorta fill it with wood filler and redo it, but it worked out fine. 

Also, like, the day after I did this Amazon had a nice set of countersink drill bits go on lightning deal so I bought them. I didn't use them for this so it doesn't count! I just wanted to have them, counter sunk screws look nice. 

The phone mount hole brought up some interesting issues. I actually put the phone in the mount and put the tray over the tub and sat down like I would if I was taking a bath to get the correct positioning for the mount. And then I discovered I was slightly wrong about the angle I wanted the phone at. The straight on angle of the mount was actually a little too far downwards, I did want it to tilt up. But like, juuuuuuuuuuust slightly. I played with trying to make a little wooden wedge under the front of the mount, I tried cutting wood chunks, which were way too steep, it literally needed just millimeters. I then tried sanding a piece of a paint stir stick to a point which was closer but when I screwed the mount down over it, it just lifted up the whole thing instead of tilting and it was all just a pain. In the end I broke my no spending rule again to get a swivel ball attachment for a tripod that the phone mount screwed directly into and would allow me to tilt it however I liked. If I was going to break my no spending rule for any part of this, I suppose the phone mount is the place to do it, I do want that to be secure and nice. 

Once I had that I was able to position and drill the hole. I didn't bother to countersink this one, it wasn't going to be on the edge of the tub. Plus I could see a situation where I don't want to use my phone in the tub, maybe I do want to read a book, and in that case I would want to remove the phone mount to make space for the book on the tray. Maybe I should come up with some kind of interchangeable book prop for that situation?

Next, after letting the stain sit for a few days, I needed to paint the mandala. I cut like maybe two inches off the bottom of my stencil copy, taped it down, and did the thing with the sponging and the stenciling and uhhhhhhhhg. I believe I made this very clear when I was working on Battleshots that I. Hate. Stenciling. I didn't have any super terrible paint bleeds, but I still spent an entire evening with a small paintbrush cleaning up the edges and making it look nice. 

I'd just like to point out you can see that the stain is much more even in this picture than it was in the previous one. Even if it still a little leopardy. I like my leopard print stain job, it makes it unique. So there.

I think it turned out okay, despite the challenges of stenciling. I also took a moment to try to paint over the wood filler parts with some brown paint to disguise it a little. It worked okay. Better than the grey filler anyways.

For the topcoat I still had a little less than half a can of satin finish polycrylic, so I just gave it two coats, top and bottom, it has just a bit of a sheen but not too much. 

Last was just attaching the hardware. I had to trim down a screw to be the right length for the phone mount, but the hacksaw made quick work of that. The screws I'd found for the knobs were honestly the perfect length and didn't need any trimming at all. I attached the hardware and added some foam pads to the bottom to protect my tub- they were just foam grippy pads I'd bought to keep my loveseat from sliding on my hardwood floor, that didn't actually work, haha. But they're self adhesive and perfect to keep my tray from scratching my tub. 

I'm really really pleased with it. I got the exact look I wanted, with the functionality I wanted. I think it's beautiful and I love it. It wasn't too hard to make either. It took me a while, but that was just because I didn't have a deadline so I just worked on it when I felt like it. No stress, no time crunch. Once I actually use it in a bath I'll stage myself a really pretty bath shot with it actually in use so it looks prettier. But all in all I'm proud of it. And I spent less than $20 on it, which, let's be real, knowing me and my usual unexpected expenses on projects, less than $20 might as well be nothing!

A Few Things

 So, due to the lack of conventions, I don't really get an opportunity to do a lot of big projects and it's making. Me. Crazy. But I'm always full of other smaller projects to keep me occupied. I just have to remember to post them in batches so I don't get buried under too many things I want to post. So here we are.

So I made myself another yoga bolster. I already had one that I made before, but it was getting used as a knee pillow at night to try and keep my hips aligned while I slept and try to avoid my ever present back issues, so I never got to use it for yoga. So I made a new one this time stuffed with a rolled up comforter from the thrift store to be a little lighter and fluffier than the other but still dense enough to not go flat like a regular pillow. I'm not going to go over what I did and I don't have any pictures, the bolster isn't the point of this, but if you want some information, I used this as a basic plan:

https://bestfabricstore.com/blog/rectangular-yoga-bolster/?epik=dj0yJnU9Mnc4UkJXRDhJdlYxZVZoT3BZZVkzZDI1STNKSnA4MXomcD0wJm49bFJVaFpOOHg3NVNPTUI1ckFyRmxDZyZ0PUFBQUFBR0FUZi00

It's pretty straight forward.

Anyways. Doing this got me thinking about how I would really like a nice boho blanket that I keep downstairs in my little yoga/book/crafting room. And I thought it would be neat and true to the spirit of yoga and earth friendliness if I could thrift it as much as possible.

So, a while back I bought a bunch of recycled sari silk curtains because their thrifty boho look is everything I want in life:

https://www.mexicaliblues.com/collections/textiles/products/recycled-silk-panel-curtain

I love them so much I bought 10 of them, knowing I didn't need that many curtains, but I would find other uses for the fabric. And this was perfect, a nice brightly colored blanket of recycled sari silk was just what I wanted.

I also got really lucky on a thrift store run and found some large chunks of quilt batting. Hilariously enough it proved to be exactly the correct amount of batting for the size of two of these curtains sewn together, although I did have to Frankenstein stitch the chunks of batting together to get the size and shape of batting I wanted.

I basically just pressed the edges of the batting pieces right up against each other and then ran a wide zigzag stitch along the seams to hold it together. 

The quilt top and bottom were easy enough, I trimmed off the loops intended for hanging them as curtains and then just stitched two together for each side. I used basting spray to stick the fabric to the batting on the top and bottom and then for "quilting" I just stitched along the lines of each strip of color on the curtains. Due to the nature of them they did not line up with each other, so I quilted the seams on the top and bottom. It's.... eclectic, let's say. Also, if you're a for realsies quilter.... maybe.... don't look. 

I don't like quilting. I'm not good at it. I don't try very hard. I get my job done well enough and I get out.

To finish I bound the edges with a gold lame binding, I had a decent amount left over from I believe my Captain Hook costume, so I got a little more to have enough and sewed it on. It was the perfect flashy trim for all the bright colors.

It's crazy and colorful and flashy and I love it. It's not large, probably roughly twin comforter sized, maybe a little smaller, but it's a perfect one person blanket.

While I was at it, I wanted some boho pillows for my couch downstairs as well. I bought some thrift store couch pillows, cut off the bottom half of one of the curtains and made new covers for the pillows.

The couch looks very cozy and boho now.

It might not seem like much but it makes me happy. 

I was even able to take the top half of the curtain I cut for the pillows and hang it in my laundry room over a previously uncovered window, it turned out to be exactly the perfect length.

Haha, what a dingy looking picture. Apologies for the bad photo, folks. It's not that bad, I promise.

I also recently finished a crochet shawl for myself, I wanted something very light and hippie looking I could wear with maxi dresses in the spring and summer. I found a gorgeous pattern called Edlothia:

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/edlothia

That was exactly what I wanted. Technically I finished it before Christmas but I hadn't gotten around to blocking it until now.

Here's mine:

The yarn I used was intended for some self patterned socks, and now that it's done I think using patterned yarn like that wasn't the best choice, I think some of the pattern detail was lost in the random seeming color changes. But I don't hate it, it has a nice fall earthy feel to it, that's not a bad thing.

I also added tassels to all the points:

And I LOVE how that turned out. I have a sleeveless black maxi dress that this is going to look great with once it's warm enough to wear it. 

I'm working on a rectangular shawl now, and I have another woodworking project that is a bit more involved, but it's not done yet, so you'll have to wait to hear about that one. That's mostly why I made this post, so I can make a whole separate post for that. I'll be back when that's done!