Sunday, April 19, 2009

What a wonderfully Dremel day!

Yesterday was a wonderful, warm sunny day. It actually reached 22! I spent most of my day outside, weeding flower beds, planting my gladiolus bulbs, and also put in a little holly bush I had gotten after Christmas. I am not certain that one will survive though, we shall see. I buried an overripe banana at the base of my rosebush, which will give it lots of wonderful potassium and hopefully help it grow and flower quite nicely this year.

I now have my flower beds ready for the woodchip mulch that my husband will be getting for me next weekend.

I also spent many hours removing excess stain from some bamboo canes I had purchsed. One of which I plan on building a little trellis for my rose bush. The others will be cut into smaller pieces to make some windchimes. I do so love the sound of bamboo windchimes, so mellow.

My copper pipe pieces have now been punched and smoothed, and the red stamping has also been removed. The next step is to design the actual windchimes I will be making with those. I used my Dremel for the smoothing and for the removal of the red stamps.

For the first time, I also attempted to use my Dremel for sanding and buffing some polymer clay beads and pendants. All I can say, is that I am glad these were practice pieces. The felt and cloth buffing circles are not quite what I expected. I will have to figure out how to make denim circles, and sandpaper circles out of my wet/dry sandpaper.

I did manage to make some moderately straight holes for the beads though. There are about 4 of the 10 that did not work right. Again, it is definately going to take practice and a lot of trial and error in order to learn how to use my toy effectively, to acheive the desired effects.

Today, I will be cutting my bamboo, drilling holes in them, and designing the actual windchimes. Later on, I will post some pictures.

2 comments:

  1. Never heard of planting a banana to give a rose bush potassium--what a great idea! I just may give it a try, too...Do you leave it in the peel? Or peel it first?

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  2. I leave it in the peel. You need to let it ripen so that it is all black and squishy. I put them beside all of my rosebushes. Just dig down a bit until you near the root system, and plant the banana :)

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