Franken-Crafts. Making something outta a whole bunch of junk...

On Monday I showed you this picture of a bunch of random items:

This is what I made:

Here's another look:

Here's how I did it:
I got this funky footed bowl with a lid at my local Goodwill.

I really like the bowl, but wasn't too wild about the lid. I think it might have been the wacky curly-doodad on top. It was sort of antennae-ish to me.

So I broke it off.

An idea started formulating in my mind... I had a little glass vase/jar from an old reed-diffuser and decided it would be a nice base for a footed bowl. I figured some plastic beads from the Dollar Tree would be just the right thing to add some detail.

Since I knew that I would be painting this entire thing with a coat of Heirloom White it didn't matter to me that the beads were purple, plastic and of the Mardi Gras variety.

I flipped the lid (henceforth, the "bowl") upside down. I ran a little bit of glue around the edge. To "start" the beads I put a little dollop of hot glue to hold the strand securely. By having the strand rest along the counter top I had hoped it would provide a guide and that the beads would go on straight.

While the glue on the bowl was setting, I took more beads and glued them on to the neck of the little glass bottle.

Next I glued the bowl to the bottle to create a pedestal bowl.

I began to add a second row of beads only to discover that the first one hadn't actually been all that straight. Oh well. It was already kind of craptastic, now it was even more of a challenge to make it something pretty.

I loves me a good challenge.

I spray painted the whole thing with my beloved Heirloom White....

Meh.

I added a coat of clear gloss...

Meh.

It definitely needed something. Not just to pretty it up a bit, but also to help balance out some of the wonky parts.....

Beads. This was kind of a pain in the arse because each one was placed by hand, with tweezers. However, if you do this at the dining room table, where you would be sitting and supervising homework anyway, it isn't so bad.

I had filled the little hole that was made when I ripped the curly-cue off of the top, so I put an orchid in there, added green sheet moss (WHICH EVERY CRAFTER SHOULD ALWAYS HAVE ON HAND) and added a little silver pin with our initial.

Mommy like!

Is it perfect?
No. But that's OK.... Like The Nester says, it doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful.

It's a little on the fragile side, so I won't toss a bunch of apples into it, or put it where boys can get it (Or where husbands need to move it off the coffee table so they can see the TV when they're lying down on the couch and complain about the fact that decorative items get put on the coffee table in the first place....!) But I digress.

At any rate, I'm happy with my little Franken-Craft and think I'm going to create a label for this and similar posts.

Thanks for looking!