more fun with wire - the little wire bed

I am having so much fun lately!

I've been Pinteresting like crazy, looking up all kinds of wire creations. This one here has been one of my favourites for a long time:

Really beautiful wire art on that blog.

Anyway, I decided it was time to make my own wire bed... I used some of Wayne's copper wire. One meter of it to be exact. When he asked how much I wanted that's what I requested and I was spot on.

Go figure. I measure and cut wood the wrong size. I can't give you a quote on how much time it'll take me to do a job, but I could tell Wayne exactly how much wire I needed to make something I'd never made before!

The thinner wire is also copper, but in a thinner gauge and brown. The little mattress is a thin bit of foam with a hand stitched cover. The cushion is hand stitched and filled with felting wool.

The blanket is a bit of felt I wet felted with a cotton cover to give it a quilted feel, and trimmed with a little antique lace.

This little bed was sold as soon as I showed it at the local shop I sell some of my things through. Its the perfect size for a doll's house. Maybe its cause I've always loved doll's houses and dreamed that one day I'd build my very own dream doll's house from the ground up, but I love making this sort of thing.

I have another bed I'll share soon as I make bedding for it.

z

wire work by him

I can't ever say Wayne doesn't give me romantic gifts. He's always making me hearts and flowers out of barbed wire. This is one of his creations, its about 8in tall and made of barbed wire, old roofing iron and a chunk of old wood.

The other day he got some new copper wire and made this cute little cowboy boot. I'd been sending him all kinds of links of cowboy boots made out of wire but Wayne always does things his way. Its a boot with a spur and a lasso.

(Ok, I made the rowel - that's the spikey bit on the spur - cause I wanted it to look cuter.)

Then there's this trapped man. Its a tortured sculpture, isn't it?

I love his wire work. He's so imaginative, which is why I wanted to show off some of his stuff.

z

fun with wire - a wire crown

I've always had a thing for wire. I love wire baskets, wire sculpture, wire anything. I love working with wire, only of course I can only work with soft wires. Lately I've been doing a bit more wire work cause its something I can do easily while sitting around watching TV in the evenings.

ie. I haven't been doing any big projects but I've been making some smaller things.

Like this little wire crown made using gold copper wire in two thicknesses, brown copper wire and buttons.

The thick wire is about 2mm thick, the brown wire is 24 gauge and the thin gold wire holding the buttons is 28 gauge.

I made this little crown as a simple decoration, to sit on a shelf or something, but I guess it can be used as as a tiny crown if you put bobby pins on it!

z

Shared at

a place for everything - even headlamps

Got home the other evening and found a stomach on the garden path.

Yep.

A stomach.

No hair. No feathers. No head. No beak. No feet.

Nothing.

Just. A. Stomach.

A ruminant's stomach.

Seems the poodles thought it was time to up the challenge for me. Every time I find one of their kills, there's less of it to identify it by. I was able to identify the last specimen by the feathers and some guts.

This time all I got was a stomach. With munched up grass in it. I'd guess rabbit or wallaby... and given they haven't yet caught a rabbit (that I know of), I'd say wallaby.

At this rate I'll soon be an expert at identifying species from the inside out.

sigh.

Ok. At this point let me just say that I don't like my poodles killing anything, even rats or mice. Though whatever is living in our ceiling is asking for it...

I especially hate it when they kill wildlife or our ducks, chickens or geese. But they have a strong prey drive and they will kill any intruder in their yard. Its a fact of life and I've had to accept that my gorgeous fluffy dogs are real dogs... predators even.

But on a cheerier note, at least a more creative one, I finally created a place for Wayne's huge collection of headlamps.

He has a million of them. Battery operated, rechargeable, you name it, he has it. He bought one so he could go out to feed the horses in the dark. Then he bought a second as a spare. Then he got a rechargeable one. Then he found a brighter one. It goes on and on.

I don't care how many he has. They come in handy when I'm searching the yard for clues such as hair, feathers, a head... What I have a problem with is him recharging them all over the kitchen counters.

I had to create a spot for them which met these requirements:

1. store all the headlamps in once spot and not all over the house
2. a spot handy to grab one on the way out 
3. a spot handy to put it back on the way back in
4. the ability to store and recharge in one place

I had no idea how to do this. I didn't know what I wanted it to look like or where to put it.

In the end I went for quick and easy. I grabbed a bit of chippy old skirting board I had in the shed, drilled holes in it and jammed in some really big nails. I added a cool chippy green-blue door thingy. Just for fun I painted the heads of the nails pale green-blue to match.

I chose to put this new headlamp hanger on the front porch, in the enclosed area. Unfortunately there's no power there so I had to use a long extension cord going from the outdoor power point in the middle of the porch and a power-board mounted on the wall. I'll be managing the cords better once I find my box of cable clips...

I added this cute half planter basket to hold the chargers.

In order to do all this I had to move a few things over to the other side, so the kitchen window ledge is looking a lot busier.

I'm happy. The headlamps are off the kitchen counter. Wayne is happy cause he no longer has to search for headlamps I've moved.

Win win.

z