The Aloe Odyssey Part II: Enter the Dremel

     When we last met, I told you about my week-long battle to find an aloe plant. I finally completed my quest at a local Garden Center, and ended up with a behemoth that just wasn't going to fit in my kitchen. He needed to be an outside plant, and he was outgrowing his tiny, plastic house at a scary rate. So, to keep him from strangling us like the vines in Jumanji, I decided to make him a new place to live.

     It took awhile to figure out the design I wanted for this project. To be honest, I can't even remember what my original idea was before I went with my ode to a Grecian urn. I wanted to pay tribute to Athena, the original VelociCrafter, so I found a picture of an Athenian owl to make a stencil for the base. I used Microsoft Word to make the pattern for the top. It's three rectangles stuck together. I know, it's terrifying how comfortable I am with modern technology.

     Since it's made up completely of straight lines, you'd think the top pattern would be the easiest part of the project.

     You would be wrong.

What do we say to sensible patterns? Not today.

   
     I used painter's tape in hopes of creating some beautiful, crisp lines. Sadly, that did not happen. I'm not sure if I didn't give the paint enough time to dry or if I was being exceptionally wild while I was painting - it was Spring Break in Ohio, you know how crazy that can get - but my lines were definitely far from pristine. I pondered for awhile, and decided two things:

1) I could just make the whole thing look old and beat up. Poorly drawn lines? Nope, authenticity.

2) If I was going to compare my attempt at straight lines to a civilization that was famous for mind blowingly good architecture, I might as well let the aloe plant eat me.

      After that little crisis of faith, I painted the base black and traced my owl stencil. This part actually went how it was supposed to.

     After that, I was ready to try out the Dremel! I painted an old terra cotta base first to give myself some room to practice. The Dremel website has a project like this where it recommends a 191 attachment. I do not. It made really rough lines when I tried to use it, and I think that more than a few minutes on terra cotta and it would have been ruined. I decided to run to Lowe's and get a Diamond Wheel attachment instead. It was way easier to use and it saved me from having to explain how I destroyed an expensive tool in a matter of minutes.

     I used the flex attachment for the Dremel, which is basically a pen-sized attachment for clumsy people like me. I did one run over the lines to check how much pressure I should use, and then went over it a few more times to try and clean up the lines. It definitely seems like it's an acquired skill, so I'm very happy that I picked something basic to start with. Anything more detailed and I would've ended up dropkicking the pot into the parking lot. Patience has never been my strong suit.

     Since I'm trying to keep it authentic (messy), I didn't spray a clear coat on it. I just filled it full of potting soil and set the behemoth up in his new home.

We're hoping that he takes on some of Groot's pacifistic tendencies. 

     Was this project perfect? Lolz. Not even a little. But it's done, I can start to implement the Dremel into my other projects, and we aren't going to end up plant food in the middle of the night.

     Silver linings, clever girls (& boys), silver linings.

XO

VelociCrafter

The Aloe Odyssey

     Apologies for the radio silence lately. My newest project ran into a bit of a snag when I realized there were no aloe plants to be found in South Louisiana.

     The whole problem stems from the fact that I can't cook. I hate it. It's hereditary. My mom and I have a combined total of 6 dishes that we can make; aside from that, it's take-out or starvation. Luckily for me, Chris actually enjoys fighting with food and he takes care of feeding time at the VelociCrafter Compound. That also means that it's up to him to face the dangers of our sink. Our water is roughly the temperature of volcanic lava, and the heat is instantaneous. This results in multiple burns, and the terrifying possibility that I might have to start cooking. Which would end like this.

I'm why we can't have nice culinary things. 

     Luckily for both of us, there was one piece of kitchen advice that my mom gave me: always have an aloe plant, because you are going to burn yourself.

     Unluckily for us, aloe is stupid hard to find - which made it very difficult to write a blog entry about making a cool container for it.

     I tried all of the places where there should be aloe, but it was non-existent. I did, however, discover that Garden Centers become creepy nightmarescapes after dusk. There are no people, no overhead lights, and the very real possibility that there is a psycho killer hiding in the ferns. There are also garden gnomes the size of small children, which is not ok.

"...and then they realized the calls were coming from the Garden Center the whole time. Dun dun duuuuuuuuuuuuuun!"

     After a week, I learned my lesson and went to a plant nursery in the daylight. It was blissfully free of gnomes and actually had aloe plants! It was also instantly obvious why I couldn't find the plants anywhere else - this aloe had eaten the smaller, weaker members of its species. 

Thanks to Funko Groot for providing some terrifying scale.

     So much for my 'tea cup planter' idea.

     However, we are nothing if not optimists here at VC, so we went looking for a silver lining. And now that I'm sure aloe plants actually exist, you can expect a new project at the start of next week that features the debut of my beloved Dremel. So stay tuned and don't give up on us just yet!

     And watch out for gnomes.

Peeps!

   

     I’m obsessed with Marshmallow Peeps. They are a marshmallow-y bastion of all that is good in the world, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.

     I also think wreaths are pretty cool, so I decided to combine my two interests this week and create this.

     I couldn't bring myself to use real Peeps. The temptation to eat them would be too much for me to handle, so these guys are made from unappetizing foam sheets. My drawing skills aren't great, so I traced a picture from my computer. I played around with the size a little bit, but in the end I stayed pretty close to the real thing. After that, it was a pretty easy job of tracing the rabbits on the foam and cutting them out. At first I was really focused on trying to cut them out perfectly. That was tedious. Don’t do that. After extensive research (a lot of eating) I determined that most Peeps are not perfect. So if one ear is a little bigger than the other, you’re actually spot on.

Yay imperfections!

     After I cut out the bunnies, I ran a quick spray of silver glitter spray paint over them to add texture. One spray should be good. Anything more than that, and they start to look a little too metallic. Once that was dry, I added a clear coat to help the glitter survive more than one Easter. Finally, I added eyes and noses with brown puff paint.

     For the actual wreath, I wanted a form that would lay flat against the door. I tried to make my own with foam poster board, and it was the stuff of nightmares. If you have more patience than me, feel free to try it out. I ended up doing three layers of the same foam I used on the peeps sandwiched between two layers of cardstock, and it held up fine. I traced a Styrofoam wreath to get the size and shape I wanted, and then glued all of the layers together. This part was a little obnoxious, especially making sure that none of the foam was peeking out around the cardstock. If I ever go Round Two with the marshmallow bunnies, I will definitely pick up a premade wreath.

     Once the nightmare wreath was done, I just hot glued the the rabbits to the form. I glued over grid paper, and I used one of the straight lines to make sure that the bunnies were more or less centered. I used pink tulle for the hanger. It's a light wreath, so hot glue should work perfectly.

After that, it's just a matter of remembering they aren't edible.