Blog 3: Hot Glue is my BEST FRIEND

Technique 2: Plastic Bottle Flowers

"I think I've already doomed myself to failure." - Richard Lüjie Wang (3 times a day, every day of his life)

As you can see, I'm quite optimistic about my new idea.

Part I: Flowers are difficult and I'm allergic to pollen

The thing about water bottles is....I have too many empty ones at home that I always forget to throw out.

Also, America throws out like 60 million a day....so uh.. Not too dandy.
Also, 80% of it overflows landfills and take thousands of years and a bunch of  chemicals to decompose.

So I'm going to be turning these water bottles into something that's not entirely awful hopefully.

 Again. I get to take a creepy knife picture. Except I think this picture is slightly more scary because of the unfinished wall of my basement in the background and my hand is actually in the picture which means I am handling the knife. (I was last time too, but this time there's proof)

I just cut the bottom of the bottle off and took advantage of its already-sorta-flowery shape.

Then I just cut it into sixteenths and ripped out some of it to make it look more flowery.

Now that I'm looking at it though....doesn't seem too flowery.

Boom snap I made five (I made 6 originally but one broke..)

Making all of these was difficult and took me much longer than it should have but I'm clumsy and my fingers bled a tiny bit for a few seconds so I got to make a big deal out of that.

I convinced myself that because I got a boo-boo, I deserved ice cream.

I don't have ice cream.

now let's watch me use fire :)

Clear flowers are boring though, so I dyed them with this thing that looks a bit like toxic waste :D

I just used some blue food dye, a few drops of dish soap, and some water to make it less goopy. The original "recipe" called for glue, except anyone who existed last year would know that glue + dish soap = kinda slime.

I dyed the flowers by drowning them in the toxic waste. You don't get to see my disaster until the end :)

Part II: Why buy fake plants when you can make your fingernails permanently green

Technique 3: DIY Fake Plants

These are cable ties.

I didn't know what cable ties were until this day.

I am learning.
(I wanted to say "notice me senpai" but then I realized that was stupid)

To make fake plants I need cotton cloth, so I dug into the black hole of my closet and found this shirt that I hate.

And it doesn't fit.

And it's ugly.

Allie...why do you own this. It's okay it is now being put to good use.

Now to display the extent of my artistic skills.

I just outlined the shape and put little teeth in it because I thought it looked like a mouth.

I swear I'm old enough to use safety scissors.

And this is the extent of my cutting skills. I'd say it's about the same as a three year-old's.

I guess this is a leaf?

Hot glue is my best friend.

This part is pretty simple math
cable tie + hot glue + cloth = stem and leaf and some veiny things

It is now slathered in paint. Which is pretty cool I guess.

It also took like two nights to dry so I was dying because I'm extremely impatient.

Allie stop being pessimistic. Be optimistic.

"You're doing great honey" - Helen Chang the cutest lil' bean in the world

Now 'tis slathered in glue. It's for a glossier and more realistic appearance. This also used up all of my patience.
-_-

Look at meeee. I'm productive :)

There are nine. The stems are still purple but I can't paint that with the limited supplies I have.

UPDATE: It's been two days and my fingernails are STILL green

Part III: I can't hammer

I don't know why or how, but my garage just happened to have scrap wood in it. Pretty convenient.

The wood in the background is my kitchen table. I will not be chopping up my kitchen table. I'm disappointed too.

The old and rustic looking flower box things have always been really cool to me, so why not try it? 

This is why:

I attempted to make the box with a hammer and nails because that's the sturdiest.The thing is.....it didn't work. In the process I believe I hit my finger more than I did the actual nail. Also the nail was super tiny and kept going in diagonally so when I hammered it, let's just say nothing went too well. I figured that if I had been spending the last three hours trying to hammer the wood together, I'd be better off trying again a different time when the wood wasn't less than a centimeter thick. (That might have been a main reason for my downfall, but also the fact that I can mess anything up is a large contributor too).

I would like all of you to know that I spelled "anything" and "contributor" wrong and got the little red underline thing because I can't spell.

This is the part where spelling bee champion Ella Chang goes: "ygwukerygfUGH All-ieeeeee"

So after a while, I ended up asking a friend "how do I use a hammer". Needless to say, he said that I'm an idiot and told me to give up.

Except I will not give up on the box. (The hammer yes, but not the box)

Hot glue is my best friend. Hot glue saved my box. Hot glue burned my finger. Burning your finger is better than hammering you finger.

It's slowly coming together. I cut off the ends of a few of the cable ties and glued them to the flowers. Styrofoam is also pretty cool. I glued it in so I could just stick the flowers into it.

The box is not traditional. Here's a side view:

Nor is it very flat. But the end with the wing is based on the cool flower box window sill hangers that are in old movies and children's books.

Right now, on a scale from awful to half-decent, I'd give this a solid "burn it with fire".

My own rendition is not nearly as cool at that, but I'm getting there.

Now all I have to do is make it presentable!!

It looks like a couch. What sucks about this is the camera quality. On the wood, there are strokes of the brush I used to make the wood look more worn. To do this I used a coarse brush with thicker bristles.

The Final Reveal...

ba doo da dooooo

Look! I actually accomplished something!!!!!!

(The flowers are brighter in person than on camera)


Of course there's room for improvement. The flowers could be bigger and more vibrant...the leaves could be better, and my woodwork could definitely be better, but if I saw this at a barn sale...I'd consider touching it.

ha. it looks like a weird bird plane thing

Citations:

my_mom.this_isn't_a_website.imagination

http://www.gogreen.org/blog/impacts-of-plastic-water-bottles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5JPd9M_hUQ&feature=youtu.be

https://www.firstpalette.com/craft-recipe/glass-paint.html