Beachy Scene in a Wood Box (popsicle stick adirondack chair, paper umbrella, paper hat, fish marbles)

Look how cute this little scene turned out - I made a popsicle stick adirondack chair, paper umbrella, paper hat, and a fishy background (note I used Stampin' Up paper for all the paper projects); filled the chalkboard box I made a while ago (click here for that post) with sand and some fake long grass, and set up the cute scene...

I looked online for how to make a popsicle adirondack chair - found a few things to give me an idea but ended up just winging it. I think you can see from the pictures how I did it  - I cut the sticks to length with my craft wire cutters (they get used for everything - not just wire cutting!) and used Elmer's glue to stick it all together. It isn't perfect but come on, it's a popsicle stick chair and doesn't really need to be ;).

Here's how I made everything except the paper umbrella, come back tomorrow and I'll show you that!

-Cut 5 popsicle sticks to different lengths to make the back, glue to a small stick across the back to hold together.
-Cut 2 sticks in half to make the seat, then glue to the chair back.
-Cut 2 sticks to make the back leg supports, I used 2 little scrap pieces for the front legs and the pieces on the top of the seat. Glue all together.


The hat was very simple but adds a little beachy touch I think is cute - cut out 2 circles from card stock, a 2" for the brim and a 1" for the top. Then cut a strip from the same paper about 1/2" by about 4" or however long you need to go around the 1" circle to make the side of the hat. Curl the strip up to form a 1" circle and glue (I used a gluestick) to hold it's shape, then glue to the 1" circle that is the top  of the hat. Then glue that to the 2" circle to make the hat. I tied a piece of ribbon around it to make it even cuter.

my glue stick is an inch around so I used
that as a guide. see the strip around the top
of the glue stick, that's the side of the hat. 

I glued the strip around the glue stick and
then glued the top on and tied with ribbon
before removing it from the glue stick and
attaching to the 2" bottom circle. Just helped
hold everything in place doing it this way. 

For the background I cut out fish shapes from patterned Stampin' Up paper and mod podged large flat glass stones on top then glued them to a background paper cut to fit inside the box. I also cut some random flowy shapes to look like seaweed and put them along the bottom of the background.

Spider Mum Paper Flowers

Remember the paper fireworks I posted before the Fourth? Well here's what I was making when I decided they would be good fireworks - spider mums. I wanted a simple airy flowery filler for Ronda's display table, saw these here and really liked them - and since I'm using Ronda's Stampin' Up  double sided papers I thought they'd be perfect.

So you make the flower part just like the fireworks, only I cut the paper into 3" x 12" strips so they are a little thicker than the fireworks. I copied the directions I posted before, click here to see the instruction pictures and that post...

for the fireworks: 3.5"x8.5" strip of cardstock, fringe one long edge with fringing scissors (or just make thin cuts the entire length with sharp scissors). Tightly roll up the strip, run some glue (I used a glue stick) along the last one inch of end so it'll stay coiled up. Pull the fringe down, slightly curving it with your fingers as you go so it pulls apart and looks like a paper pompom. Add a drop of glue to the underside of the coil then insert a wooden skewer.

To make them into flowers is a tiny bit trickier. You need to wrap the bottom of the flower onto a piece of floral wire using floral tape, but the bottom of the flower is way bigger than the wire so there needs to be something between the flower and the wire so it tapers down more like a real flower would. I was unable to just tape the flower to the wire. The instructions I followed said she uses pieces of tissue paper wadded up to fill in the gap, that worked pretty good - I thought maybe cotton balls would work but the tissue paper is better. I struggled getting the flower, filler, and wire to stay together while I was wrapping with the floral tape so played around with better ways to go about doing that - I found that if you wrap regular clear tape around first it's so much easier to then wrap the floral tape around the bottom of the flower, around the filler, and then down the wire a few inches

To shape them, run your finger and thumb down each strand and bend slightly.

Fishnet Wrapped Mason Jar

When we decided on a beach theme for Ronda's seasonal display table I immediately thought about those cute net wrapped mason jars I see everywhere - in fact when I showed my sister the one I ended up making and told her she needed one she replied "yep, I own that. except I bought it". Well where's the fun in that haha? So I wanted to make one - did a little internet searching and ended up sort of following the directions I found here. Wasn't hard at all, you only need twine and a jar (and scissors) - I took lots of pictures to show you the process, if you need more directions click on the above link and see if her instructions help.

Directions:

1. Wrap a piece of twine around the top of the jar with a little extra to tie off. Lay it out on the table.

2. Cut 10 lengths of twine that are 32" each. Fold in half, put the loop under the short piece of twine that will go around the top of the jar, then feed the two ends thru the loop and pull tight. Repeat with all ten long pieces, space them out on the short piece, then tie the short piece around the top of the jar.

fold 32" piece in half and put under the short piece

bring the two ends up over the short piece and thru the loop, pull tight

repeat with all 10 long pieces, space them evenly 

then tie the short piece around the top of the mason jar. with the 10 knotted pieces hanging down

3. For the first row, knot two lengths of twine together about 1" down from the top. Repeat the whole way around. For the second row continue knotting 2 lengths together making a diamond pattern. Repeat each row until you get to the bottom of the jar - note you are creating a net of sorts and it will stretch, once I got towards the bottom I turned the jar over and stretched the twine to see how many more rows I needed. Once you have created enough net to cover the jar tie all the little ends together underneath the jar, try to make them somewhat even so the jar will sit straight when upright.

 

take two lengths and tie them together about 1" down from the top

 repeat around the jar to make the first row.

repeat for each row

stretch the net a bit until it looks right and is long enough to be able to wrap around the bottom

then start knotting all 20 of the ends together to hold the net in place.

try to space the knots so they aren't all on top of each other in one place so the jar sits flat and not all wobbly. 

4. Trim off any tails - you could finish this with additional twine wrapped around the top of the jar if you want. 

For Ronda's table I filled them with paper spider mum flowers; sand, shells, a candle, etc. would look good too!

I found some instructions here at itallstartedwithpaint.com