Crafty Update

Yesterday was a productive day:

First, I finally sold the 64 cylindrical vases from our wedding for my asking price.  They had been sitting in my parents' basement for over a year, and am glad that they have a new home with an enthusiastic, soon-to-be bride.  Now to just write up an ad for the winter tires L has sitting in the garage and we'll have a little more fun money to play around with.

Next, J and I took an adventure to a thrift store, craft store, and a hardware store to gather up the supplies we needed to create our craft.  We went to the Uptown Art Fair last weekend and were inspired by one of the booths to use vintage silverware to create functional pieces of art.  We saw the utensil wall hooks and decided to give those a try (despite us not having the recommended torch to help flatten and bend the silverware).  At the thrift store, we each found two larger silver spoons with ornate patterns on the hand piece for between $.69-.99 each.  Then at Michael's, we found small unfinished wooden blocks with beveled edges for less than $1 each, so we each picked up 2 of them.  Finally, we stopped in at Home Depot to pick up some small nails to use to attach the spoons to the wood blocks. 

This project went a lot more smoothly than we had originally anticipated it to go.  The hardest part was waiting for the paint on the wood blocks to dry between layers.  We used a hammer to pound the heads of the spoons flat, and a rubber mallet to shape the spoon into a hook.  Then, we used a 1/16 bit on an electric drill to make two small holes in each of the spoons to make sure that the nails would go through easily.  The final step was to place the spoon on the block and hammer in the nails to keep the hook in place.  Here are the final results:

The plan is to hang these in the kitchen, as the white paint contrasts well with the red on our walls.  Now all we need to do is either drill a small hole in the back or add on mounting hardware to finish them up.

Overall, this was a very easy and fun craft to make and am thinking of making these for family and friends, so if you would like to request one, let me know and I can customize the colors :-)