Western General Store

I was cutting out these shelf brackets from mahogany and noticed a pretty left-over design. Well, I must make something out of that! An idea came to me to make a Decorative Cross piece. The dimensions of this piece are 5" wide x 14" tall. I knew mahogany had a dark rich tone when sealed with a clear sealer. For contrast I squiggled some acrylic turquoise lines to look like turquoise inlay. Since this is the back, I could practice my technique. A Key hole was installed on the back for easy hanging. I put a finish on a Leather Cross , then glued on a metal Cross with regular Gorilla Glue. I've never used this glue before, and it worked great! I sawed off the little loop hanger at the top of the metal cross and filed any sharp edges. I wanted to sand some of the sealer so I could glue on the leather cross. I traced the cross onto contact paper, cut it out and taped it onto the wood. After sanding, I glued the leather cross onto the wood using...

For this project I turned an old cabinet door from my kitchen remodel into a beautiful colorful Serape Arrow Coat Rack! Here is what the cabinet door looked like originally. I sanded down the door. It's ugly now, but will become beautiful! A smaller drawer panel became my practice piece. I tried to find serape fabric or serape wrapping paper with no luck, so I decided to find a photo of a serape blanket on the internet and print it out on a large format printer. I cut the photo to fit onto the drawer panel and after painting a thin coat of Mod Podge, I placed it on the panel. I smoothed it out with my fingers and a brayer. After it had dried I added a coat of Mod Podge in matte finish. I drew an arrow on 1/4" plywood and cut it out on the scroll saw. I cut out a second one and painted both arrows coordinating acrylic paint colors. After it dried I sanded a little paint off, then brushed on a coat of Mod Podge. I painted the frame blues and yellows ...

When I wade through my husband's woodworking shop I'm always finding things that might be repurposed into something useful or artistic. He makes boat tillers and when I saw these tiller "drops" I thought candle holders! In other words, these are the unused portions of the tiller that he throws away. Ok, put a tea light in the top and voila! But they weren't wide enough to put a tea light so I came up with the idea to have a trim piece at the top and bottom big enough to hold a tea light and it's also more stable. These are made from mahogany and ash. I drilled a hole in the top piece for the tea light and screwed it into to the tiller. Screwed the bottom piece on and sprayed it with polyurethane. I wrapped rope from the craft store and tied into a reef knot.