Button Jewellery!

I recently channeled my inner Helen Tran and made some jewellery.

Since it's me, my necklaces had to involve buttons. Obviously.

To complete this project I used buttons, metal jump rings, two pairs of pliers, some chain that I bought special, and a chain from a thrift store necklace. My pliers also include wire cutters. If yours don't, you might need some of those as well.

I don't have step-by-step pictures, but here's the basic rundown:

1. Split the chain where you want to put a button.
2. Use pliers to open up a jump ring. This is where you want two pairs. I've used one pair and my fingernails before, and ended up with painful, ragged fingernails. Not recommended.
3. Feed the jump ring though the last link in the chain and through one hole in a button. With one pair of pliers, gently press the jump ring closed again.
4. Use another jump ring through another buttonhole to connect to either another button or the next piece of chain.

This was tons of fun. If I hadn't run out of rings, I would have kept going all night. Buttons! Love 'em.

Salvaged Wood Shelf

In July a family up the street from us replaced their deck. They piled bundles of old, dirty, splintered wood on the boulevard for the city's waste collectors to pick up.

"Let's take some!" I said.

Under cover of darkness (because we're shy, not because this was illegal), we made off with a wheelbarrow full of wood.

"What are we making?" my boyfriend asked, quite reasonably. To be honest, I just wanted to have some wood. Before I moved to the city, I always had access to wood, and tools, and whatever I might need to make or fix whatever came along. It's just a requirement of life, right?

But I said, "We'll make a shelf." We did need something to keep our gardening things organized and up off the ground. Also slightly sheltered from the rain. So we did some sanding.

We did a lot of sanding.

And it turned out the wood was pretty nice underneath it all.

We figured out a design that used the lengths of wood we were able to salvage. The four posts are joined with one-foot lengths of wood, and the shelves sit on the one-foot lengths. Three pieces of wood snug against each other on top make a roof/work surface, and extra wood at the back will keep things from tumbling off.

Ta-da!

And here it is in its new home. I love building things! It's so satisfying. When the humidity drops enough we'll weatherproof it, but for now I'm really happy with the look and function.