Garden Art

My husband and I spent our summer vacation covering about 60 miles a day traveling from Davenport IA to Zurich IL by way of Madison and Milwaukee WI. We had a blast. Our goal was to take our time and check out breweries and antique stores. 

Here are a few of my antique finds

Actually, I already had these handles.

I wanted to turn these into some art for my backyard perennial garden. So, I explained what I wanted to my husband. He suggested we find a pitchfork for the big wheel.

 So, we found this at an antique store in Syracuse. It's small and once we got home and picked up the wheel and remembered how heavy it was we were a little worried it wouldn't work.

 This is the end, it was taped together.

Sheldon inscribed on the side.

The small fork was able to handle the heavy weight of the wheel and the colors match my mostly green and brown garden perfectly.

 This one is much smaller and lighter. My husband decided to go with this handle instead of the doorknob. 

 Here's a couple of views showing how he put it together for me. 

I'm loving my garden even more between these two items and one of my new birdbaths. 

Jewelry Holders from Garden Products

I found both of these inexpensive items at a local antique mall. Both were covered with chipped paint and my original idea was to repaint them.  However, once my husband took the old paint off I liked the way they looked so I left them bare.

This is a little metal trellis for a potted plant. I took one look at it and saw a way to organize my earrings. Once I showed my husband where I wanted to hang it and what I wanted to do with it he made the base for it and hung it up for me. It's perfect!

This is a holder for a potted plant. It now holds my necklaces. It's so easy to see what I have and they never get tangled. 

New Bird Bath

I love wandering through antique stores and garage sales looking for items I might be able to repurpose. Just small things.

Here's our most recent project-a birdbath made from an old light fixture. I saw this idea in a gardening book at school and then I looked it up on Pinterest and found more examples. I showed the idea to my husband and he agreed it was a cool idea and he said he would help me.

It took awhile to find a light fixture I was willing to buy. $35-$55 dollars seemed a bit pricy. Even the $15 I paid for this was more than I was expecting to pay but after seeing the other prices my husband said go for it, so I did. 

Once we got it home I cleaned it up and then he did rest of the work. 

I've included some close up photos so you can see how it is put together.

 Now, I just need to wait for the birds to discover it and get some pictures of it being used.

We're pleased with the way it turned out.

Here are a couple more we tried.

This one did not work. As soon as we added water it tipped and spilled it all out. Oops!

This one works fine.