Pin and DO! Garden Projects from Pinterest!

This spring I vowed to actually DO some of the many projects I've been pinning on Pinterest and dreaming about for months.   And I'm happy to say our garden & yard is absolutely beautiful because of it - I challenge everyone to actually put down the computer and DO some of those awesome things you've been pinning!

We built a fence around our air handler unit with reclaimed wood, made an old barbed wire wreath, continue collecting eclectic things for our flea-market garden, aged new galvanized tin buckets to make planters that look like vintage tin, and I love these vintage tin fertilizer hopper and fruit/corn baskets I used as planters.

The whisky barrel side table is another Pinterest idea.

AND, we built a chicken coop and I painted this custom sign for it!

Four chickens so far…… and more coming soon!

Faux Cement Bowl with Smoothfoam

While spending some time on Pinterest searching garden decor ideas, I started to notice that I was really drawn to the cement bowls in all sizes.  Especially those with succulents displayed in them. I am part of the Smoothfoam™design team and we were recently challenged to create a spring/Easter project with one of their  hollow Smoothfoam™ spheres.  It was the perfect base for creating my own faux cement bowl!

Materials:

Hollow Smoothfoam™ sphere in size of choice
Smoothfoam™ disc for base of bowl
Westcott® craft knife
Emery board, marker, string/ribbon
Ad tech™ hot glue gun and foam glue sticks
Ad tech™ silicone finger guard
Plasti-Kote® Fleck Stone spray stone finish -  Manhattan Mist










Instructions:

Step 1:

Choose Smoothfoam™ hollow sphere and disc.

Step 2:

Use emery board (or sandpaper) to sand top rim of half of sphere.

Step 3:

Determine how high you want the sides of your bowl to be.  Measure from rim to base and place a mark where you will cut the sphere.  Using a piece of ribbon or string cut to the same length to place onto the curve of the sphere will simplify marking additional spots around the sphere.

Step 4:

Use craft knife to cut from mark to mark and remove the base of the sphere.

Step 5:

Use Ad tech low temp glue gun with foam glue sticks to glue disc to base of sphere.

Step 6:

Add hot glue around inside of sphere where disc connects.

Step 7:

Apply hot glue to outside of bowl where disc meets base,  while glue is still hot use silicone finger guard to smooth glue into crack and eliminate any excess glue.

Step 8:

Spray with Fleck Stone spray inside and outside of bowl.

Fill your finished bowl with Spanish moss and add faux succulents or special Easter eggs like these made from Smoothfoam™ (stay tuned to find out how these eggs were decorated!).

This is the bowl from Pinterest that inspired my faux version.