Like many others recently, I had the fantastic idea of making my Christmas presents this year.
Brilliant! I thought that my presesnts will be cheaper, thoughtful, give me the opportunity to make things (which I love) and practice some skills (which I sorely need.)
It was, lets just say, not as easy (or cheap) as I thought. But anyway, results as follows:
Firstly
A planter for my Mum.
A fairly simple design that only involves some lengths of wood, 8 screws and a length of metal wire.
In retrospect I could have done with the ability to make straighter cuts, as this is what the whole design hinged on (also, about two cuts from the end -having sweated my way through all the sawing with my hand saw- my next door neighbour's gardener swanned over and said he had a circular saw in his van and I could have used that. BIT BLOODY LATE BUDDY!) However, it turned out alright in the end.
Once all the cuts were made it was a simple case of drilling the holes (with my shiny new drill) and feeding the wire through. A few more clamps would have come in handy at this point!
Then simply a case of oiling it for protection and attaching a base (made using simple mitres for which my friend kindly leant me his mitre saw.) In a further stroke of excellence I forgot to take a photo of the finished product, oh well, I'll get one from Mum at some point.
** I forgot I have a picture of it finished now.. see below:**
Next, a rustic clock for my Dad.
This involved a lot of trial and error, mostly becasue it took about 3 different clock mechanisms to find one with a long enough spindle for the depth of the wood, that would also fit with the hands I had. Amazon and Ebay got some good business out of me that week! However, as the mechanisms are only about £2 each it was hardly a crippling investment. Chiselling the recess for the mechanism was fairly simple but also reasonably time consuming.
The slice of Ash was purchased from a nice man Scottish man on
Etsy.
I decided to keep it simple - no numbers and very little sanding (I figured, knowing my Dad, he wouldn't notice any extra sanding anyway.) So simply - A Clock:
Next on the list: A hamper for my partner's parents.
Starting with a simple box made from old pallets (which hopefully will be useful in other ways once it served it's purpose as a hamper.)
Full of (potentially) tasty things. Including: truffles, mince pies and chilli jam. Also a little reindeer fellow (Rudi) who may appear later.
As part of future hampers: Mini Mulls (something like a tea bag for making mulled cider or apple juice.)
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Drying the cheese cloth post wash. |
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| Contents: Cinemon, Star Anise, Black Pepper, Cardomom, Cloves |
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| Lovingly Packaged |
Possibly the most frustrating: Chrismas Cards. Time contraints meant there were only two designs. Tree:
and bunting:
Finally for now: A Christmas Tree Decoration: Rudi (The Red Nosed Reindeer.)
Please accept my apologies for poor photography - it's dark in my kitchen (slash workshop) and I was too rushed to bother making much effort.
Merry Christmas All,
The Lazy Projector.
Due to the (assumed) popularity of my first Bee hotel I have endeavoured to make a second, slightly more elaborate, version. 
This Hotel is a birthday present for my talented other half who made me this lovely gift for Christmas:
