Trash to Treasure Throw down Take Two

 I would have said "Challenge" but it just didn't work with the alliteration I had goin' on there.

So, as I am sure you guessed by now, I have not finished my T2T piece yet - but I do have until April 6th!  I really need to stop overthinking things!

Marijke finished her piece which you can see on her blog at Pulchinella's Cellar.  It's a wonderful little mid-century modern piece and I just love it - especially the mirror on the wall.  I want one of those for real!

Louise also finished hers but has been so very busy getting her house ready to go on the market that she has not been blogging so I promised I would show a couple of pictures of her end product.  It depicts a wind-swept derelict shack on the beach that has been blown over by a big storm.  The flamingos have now taken over (of course!) and there is a little site set up where someone has obviously been taking shelter under the side of the tipped over shack.

On the back of her piece she pasted a list of the T2T items she used to make her scene.

It is truly amazing what a person can do with just little bits and bobs of things, isn't it?

As for my entry - sadly I feel like I got very little done this week.  Well, I did do a lot of thinking and changing my mind on ideas, as usual.

The easiest thing to show you is my little eraser project.  I used a white/blue eraser for something to add interest to one of the balcony walls (once I install it!)

I angled the top of the eraser, painted the whole thing green - although that colour might change before my project is finished - added two little roof portions that I painted a terracotta colour, used two of the pins I pulled out of the push pins I used for the base of the bird bath, to act as perches, and added two dots of black for entrance holes.  And there was my bird house for my balcony.  Child's play!

On to bigger and better things!  

I mentioned in my last post that, on the inside cover of the book box I am using to house my project, I wanted to post a picture of an apartment interior and maybe add some French doors that one could imagine lead from the apartment to the balcony scene I will be creating.  I chose a picture from the internet and used one of my allowable pieces of computer paper to print it out.  Since I did not need the whole sheet to print out the size I wanted I made sure to take advantage of the blank space on the page to also print out some leaves that I could use in my corner garden on the balcony.

The other piece of computer paper would be used to simulate French doors.  I still had a "free" supply item I could choose from my stash so I chose a piece of acetate to act as "glass" inside the French doors.  Here I am, just getting started.  I have drawn an outline of the faux doors I planned on making.

Okay - it's at this point that I think I lost my mind.  I must write on the blackboard 500 times "I will not obsess over the tiniest of details!"  

I cut out the basic door shape then, in my addled thinking, I thought I could add layers of paper to frame out each section to provide more detail in the final product.  I painstakingly cut out 1/4" strips and glued them around the two doors, the windows in the doors and the transom window above the door.  Then I cut out 1/8" strips and centred these on all of the 1/4" strips to make it look like a stepped trim.  I didn't have enough paper to make more than one layer of each size but, when I was finished adding a double layer molded panel to the bottom panels, I thought it all looked pretty good!  Here it is in process:

Now, I know there are many of you out there chuckling right now because you already know what happened next, don't you?  Of course, I painted the whole thing and let it dry.  That was when I realized that, because the paper was so thin, once the paint hit it, it all became a single layer with no definition whatsoever.  Do you have any idea how long it took me to trim that all out?????

Well, not to be deterred, having come this far, I got out my trusty Crayola pencils and started adding definition and shading to try to make the doors have a little bit of personality.  I used a light brown and a dark brown to add the shading and outline some of what should have been the architectural features.  It may not have been what I had in mind at the start but I think it turned out okay in the end.

So now I needed to add the "glass", attach the picture behind the doors and make some handles.  For the handles I used a total of 6 of my ten beads and small pieces of a white coated paperclip.  Okay, the handles may be a little wonky but, in the end, people will be looking at the balcony, not the door, right???

So, here is the finished door along with the chair I made last week and the little bird house I made earlier this week.  Take a quick look then I will point out a couple of things that truly confirms how ridiculously focussed I can be on the teeniest of things.  Man, this b&%ch be crazy!!!

Why do I think I must be crazy??  Because I cannot let the little things go, even for a simple T2T challenge.  When I covered the chair cushions with the napkin paper I had, I looked at the colours in the napkin and really could not allow myself to just make things randomly.  They all had to tie in with the fabric or some other part of the overall design. So, even though no one other than me will probably notice, the roof of the birdhouse perfectly picks up the orange/terracotta colour in the chair fabric, and the green as well.  I chose this particular picture of an apartment interior because the colour of the floor also picks up the colour as does the terracotta coloured leather chair in the room.  The corner of the sofa you can just see on the left inside the French doors picks up the lighter beige-yellow colour in the balcony chair cushion.  It would have driven me absolutely crazy if these things didn't tie in to each other.  What is wrong with me???  Is there any cure out there for this madness??? *sigh*

Well, hopefully my madness isn't contagious but, then again, I'm very suspicious I may have caught it from some of you perhaps????  Oh well, we'll all be good company for each other.  So, I'll be off now with hopes that I will have the finished project to show you next Tuesday.  Stay safe, stay healthy!  TTFN!! - Marilyn