Since we moved to our current place along the shore of Lake Erie my creative juices have been sparked. I don't know if it's the lake itself, the wind, the waves or the abundance of stuff that washes up along the shore that just begs for something to be created.
Obviously the sunset photos started right away and I have thousands of them. Just for fun, I counted and year to date through yesterday of this year, I have 688 sunset pictures! This year only! No wonder I have data storage issues. But I digress. so they were (and are) the first creative expression.
Christmas of the first year here I made everyone ornaments. Clear ornaments that I put sand, a little bit of beach glass and some evergreen branches. Tied a bow around the top and called it done. I must not of thought that much of them because it appears I didn't take a single photo.
The next Christmas I attempted Christmas trees made out of driftwood. I had bags and boxes of driftwood that I dutifully collected with this project in mind. The ornaments were going to be beach glass! My besties and my family were all going to get one. HUGE FAIL. Not even one made it to the completed state. And when we were cleaning out the basement recently hubby brought out the bags and boxes of driftwood and ordered that I return them to the lake from where they had come!
The next Christmas I tried beach glass Christmas trees. They were all over the internet and they were gorgeous. I set up a big table in the basement and sorted glass for days into greens, blues, whites and browns. And then I began. It was much harder than I thought and wasn't looking anything like the pictures I'd seen but I kept plugging along. My daughters came over while I was in progress and both told me to please NOT give them one. So I abandoned that idea too.
Next up was Caitlin's wedding on the beach at OBX. Surely i could find a way to scratch my creative itch and get my beach glass into the decor. This time hubby and Caitlin were the artists and after every prototype of what was supposed to be a beach scene table centerpiece, Caitlin would say something to the effect of "those are not going on my tables!" Personally I think she was a little harsh.
Which brings us to my latest effort. Last summer I decided I was going to refinish this hideous table I had been using as a bedside table and there was going to be beach glass involved. Following is a series of photos of the process and the almost finished result! It takes 72 hours for the final finish to cure but I couldn't wait that long to post this!
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| The original ugly beast |
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| Mid stripping. I think it had been painted 6 different colors in it's life. |
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Primed - unfortunately I neglected to take a photo of it completely stripped.
It's a pretty mahogany table. |
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| Laying out the beach glass |
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| Time to call in help |
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Ensuring all is level.
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I actually have a video of the epoxy being poured but Blogger isn't cooperating with me about posting it. It would go here.
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| Getting rid of bubbles |
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| Finished top view! |
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Voila! And it only took a year!
But who's counting?
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As always, Thanks for reading!
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