I’ve been wanting to try “shaker” projects for a while, and actually have had the tools to make them for quite some time and never taken them out of the package! Whoops!
So I sat down last night at my craft table after the kids went to bed and gave it a shot. It sucked. Seriously, I could NOT make that dang fuse tool work to save my life. I got more and more frustrated and finally just gave up and went a different route and laminated the thing so I could say I actually got something done.
But since I stay up late (vicious afternoon nap cycle for the win/lose) I spent some time last night on YouTube trying to figure this thing out. I didn’t find much that was helpful, lots of videos of people using their fuse tool with zero issues (doesn’t help me at all), and finally found this random video of a lady who gave some tips as she had the SAME issues I was having.
This morning I woke up and decided to give it a try…. It’s not perfect, but it was WAY less frustrating than last night’s projects!!
I used this We R Memory Keepers Fuse Tool I purchased a while back on Amazon, except instead of using the fuse tip, I used the CUTTING tip, which they don’t bother to tell you ALSO fuses. Woot! I have the silicone mat from We R Memory Keepers, but I really thing the tempered glass surface will do better and provide a cleaner fuse/cut, so that arrives tomorrow. Thank you so much, Amazon Prime. š
Hope you enjoy today’s project! What is everyone else working on this weekend?
I get motivated to complete projects in the strangest of ways. Really, my hubs decided it was time to get the driveway concrete replaced, and so the crew arrived this morning and started the daunting (and crazy noisy) task of ripping out the old one and hauling it away. We have a TON of driveway so this is a fairly large project.
I see all that crap getting torn out and for some reason it gets me excited and motivated to start a project I’ve been avoiding for a couple months now – my flower beds. A few months back I got randomly motivated and completed all the current beds in the backyard by ripping out the 10 years of mulch the previous owners left behind coated in weeds and replacing them with nice stone edging and river rock. I have potted plants and container gardens strategically placed throughout. We still have two beds yet to be made or in various stages of half-assed back there, but that’s a project for a different day.
I decided to go ahead and start the front bed, specifically the large cut in portion by our front door and in front of our living room windows. We get a lot of water there so we’re working on the drainage, and I decided to do a wavy rock garden with some of the river rock we had left from the backyard project. Keep in mind this 1.5 tons of rock is currently housed on the back of our 0.75 acre lot, they’re ripping up the driveway right beside where the rock is being stored, AND the bed I want to work on is in the front yard. I spent most of the morning stripping out all that nasty mulch and this scrubby little ground cover plant that never took off and HOLYCRAP was that a lot of material to rake up and shovel into bags.
Got that finished and laid down the weed cloth, then started putting the rocks in. I puzzled over how to move them basically around the house crossing basically 3 sides of a 0.75 acre square and settled on small buckets pulled by a utility wagon. Smart, yet stupid.
That’s a lot of rocks. A LOT OF ROCKS. I made trip after trip after trip, dumping and spreading my rocks, then heading back the long way around the house for more rocks. Halfway through I start muttering to myself, and 3/4 of the way through I’m downright flat out bitching to myself. “WHAT stupid moron decided that an effing rock garden in the front beds would look good? Eh, Jamie? Oh yeah, it was YOU, you crazy delirious heifer. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING”
Luckily we have no neighbors within earshot on all three sides of the house that I was traveling so there was no one around to pass judgement on my sanity. My hubby made some sort of comment and I responded with something about my soft squishy mom body. I’m not even sure now what I was talking about, pretty sure I was delirious.
My whole day in painful photos.
I FINALLY got it all done, after modifying my “design” a little on the fly to accommodate some issues I didn’t think through or map out before I started. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, and VERY happy I probably won’t have to do this much work on the rest of the beds. (Not doing NEAR the rock work in those) – my current plans for this space call for some really large, low, round “dish” containers/pots to do some succulent container gardens in, a few small potted plants, and most likely a garden bench with flagstone stepping stones across to it.
What do you think? Do you love DIY garden or home projects! I’d love to see some of your work! Leave a comment and let me know what you’ve done!!!
