Glass yard art tutorial

This week has been a whirlwind of boredom!  All of my kids have been sick and we had the very worst sickness night in the record of our family!  It started on Tuesday night with Josh, then has progressed through all the kiddos through today.  Now just Josh is all the way better.  On Friday night the babies had almost uncontrollable fevers (the only thing that would bring them down was a tubby, even with Ibuprofen and Tylenol), Kendall and I both got, at the very most, a scattered 1-2 hours of sleep...not bad to some of you I know, but it was a record crappy night on our list.  Plus, if either one of them touched the other at all, all hell broke loose...time to upgrade to a king size bed!  So, my tender mercy this week has been my garden.  I really love spending time puttering around, weeding, mowing and just enjoying the fruits of my work.  Even just walking out to get the mail makes me happy when I see that all my flowers are starting to bloom...I'm a nerd I know, but I really do love it!

I have been collecting glass from...everywhere...for a while and it has been sitting in my laundry room in boxes for months.  I finally decided to make my yard art!  So after snuggling _____(insert name here of sick child)_____for a while, I'd go change a load and glue a stack of glass.  Then, back to snuggling.

 Some of you may be like my husband and think these are kind of weird, or clutter, but I really love how the light plays around all the different types of glass throughout the day.  And this year I added a lot of color to them and I really love the way they turned out.

The picture below was on the 4th.  

 This is today.  So only 11 days later my flowers have gotten ginormous. You can hardly even see the birdhouse hiding out in the sunflowers!  That's why they are one of my favorite things ever.  They grow so fast that you can actually see them doubling each day.  (They are the Russian Mammoths in the back that grow really tall.)  The kids think they are super fun too!

 This may be my favorite piece so far.  I love it!

 This one didn't photograph very well, but I really like this one too!

 FYI...I, in no way, profess to be a "real" gardener...I just have fun planting what I think looks good together.   I'm sure I'm breaking some sort of rules or something, but I just pretend to know what I'm doing.

 So, how do you make these cute yard art stakes you ask?

Supplies:
-Variety of glass plates, cups and bowls in all different shapes, colors and sizes.  (Most of mine are from my sister Laura's yard sale, and tons from the DI.)
-E6000 (This glue is awesome.)  Use a coupon at Joann's.
-Vases with medium-ish openings.  (These are at the bottom of your piece to hold it on the stake.)
-Rebar or sturdy wooden stakes.

1- Stack up your items in different ways.  Try different arrangements before you glue them all together. If you're struggling with the order, you can look at mine to see the order I like.  Sometimes it helps to walk away for a while, then come back and make sure you like what you've done.


2- Apply a generous amount of glue in between each layer of glass.  Make sure you have a good bond between each layer.


3- Let dry for at least 24 hours. Make sure no one will be bumping these because they are pretty topsy turvy until they are put on the stakes.  (Been there done that!)

4- Pound your stakes into the ground and slide your yard art on!




So what do you think???  Yard art or clutter?           (BTW...Kendall said that they've grown on him now...)

Our outdoors

We have been spending soooo much time outside lately.  It's so nice to have the babies be big enough to enjoy playing, without getting into too naughty of things!  I've seen all sorts of fairy gardens everywhere lately and I've fallen in love, so I decided to make my own.  The kids and I had so fun putting this together.  It didn't turn out exactly the way I wanted it too, but I will definitely be making more.

 If you look in our back yard this is usually what you'll see.  Yes, Sam is wearing his helmet to play in the sand box.  He'd just jumped off his bike and was "only going to play for a minute!"  This sandbox has seriously been the best investment we've ever made; hours and hours of fun.  Kendall brought home a big pipe and cut  it into pieces so they could make tunnels.  I love seeing them come up with all sorts of ideas when they are playing and it's so funny to listen to them create little scenarios. 

This is some of my yard art.  All of these are thanks to Laura's most recent yard sale, except the one on the end.  Laura surprised Maggie with that one...the eyes glow at night.  These little lovelies sit on my window ledge.

I don't know if you're as into the spray paint craze as I am, but it definitely does wonders.  I was pretty torn about this little deer because it was the original painted colors, but after giving it a coat of turquoise, I love it. I put these on cake stands to raise them off the ground.

 My garden isn't very pretty this time of spring, but I put this picture in to show what Kendall did for me.  He put all these pavers in as a border.  I love it and it's not just for looks.  Because this bed is sloped the dirt likes to run out when I water, now it won't!  Since this picture, I've moved all the creeping jenny ground cover to the border and transplanted the jupiter's beard (red flower plant) to another part of my yard.  The daffodil stems are all gone now too.  We got some loads of mulch from the dump...this is a great deal...only $15.00 per huge scoop.  It makes our yard look so much better! I am finally done planting all my seeds and can't wait for them to pop up!  I still can't believe how much I love to garden...don't tell my mom!  What kinds of things are you doing in your garden?