There is a slight over population of pottery in our house. While a good portion is squeezed onto a blue double shelf in the kitchen, a second shelf has been needed.
Dan brought home a bunch of scrap wood that filled about half of the trunk of my car. I picked out two pieces that I thought would work well together with these decorative brackets I picked up at a yardsale last summer. Look hearts. How cute.
First the wood all needed sanding and the brackets needed a good cleaning. I did this by hand. It reinforced how much I want a palm sander. I would have given the brackets a smoother surface if I had one. I attached the back piece to the brackets first. Then added the top shelf. I wanted the back piece to have a strong connection with the wall since I was picturing pottery on the shelf. I think it came out pretty cute.
I used the dark walnut stain I have from a previous project. (this stain will be around for a while as it is a large can.) This wood soaked up the stain much more than I expected. It is darker than the previous piece that was done in oak. I do like the dark color.
There was some, um, challenges with attaching it to the wall. We have stone hard plaster that is very thick. The first try for a hole needed to be filled and repainted. I happen to think I did a pretty good job at the spackling and repainting.
Once the shelf was up, it didn’t actually get the pottery I originally planed. Instead, it has some pewter pieces and the leaky teapot*. The sconces were also added to balance out the space. I’m pretty happy with it. When I unpack the matching pewter pieces to the service, I’ll trade out the silver.
Project costs:
- Wood – Free
- Brackets – $.25
- Stain – Already had
- Screws – roughly $1.60 and $3.00
*The story of the leaky teapot – A couple years back, I wanted to have a spring millinery tea. To have a tea, I needed the right teapot. As everything was buried in storage, I looked for a teapot. Of course, I didn’t want to spend money on just any teapot. So, for weeks I drove my husband crazy looking for the right teapot. We saw lots of teapots. Each of them was the wrong teapot. With a week to go, we stopped at a shop Dad used to go to fairly often. When we pulled up, we realized she was closed. As we were about to leave, she came running out of the house and opened the shop for us. Given this, we knew we had to buy something. At this time, our budget was very tight after a stretch of bad. It came down to this one silver teapot. After all, I needed a teapot.
I washed it up. Used a little toothpaste to polish it lightly. Rinsed it off and let it dry.
Millinery tea day came. I filled the teapot and put it on the tray with other tea goodies. We had a lovely day sewing and chatting. As it was warmish, we stuck to cool drinks. When I went to clean up, I noticed the tray was filled with water while the teapot was not. 😦
There was a leak teapot.
It is right at the curve inward where I would have never noticed it. I had quite the laugh over this teapot’s leaky spot. I’d love to keep flowers in it eventually as it will hold just enough water below the leak.
One of the thing I love about the techniques I shared in Fanciful Utility is that they can be used for so many projects. This time of year, FanU is great for fun, festive projects. For the next few weeks, I am going to share some of the ways FanU gets Festive.
These will be beautiful done up in silks as well as modern fabrics such as satins and sparkly knits. Choose solid fabrics and embellish them with scraps of trims or sequins. Chose striped fabrics to create bands around the ornament.
Bauble – (2) a small, usually spherical ornament made of coloured or decorated material which is hung from the branches of a Christmas tree Usual US name Christmas ornament. (Collins English Dictionary – Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition) 
I used a single cotton fabric for my box. It could easily be made with alternating fabrics. (I did notice the white ground does shadow through the pasteboard more than I would like. This would be an easy one to trim with decorative braid or embroidery. You could add a handle like a food take away box, to hang it from the tree. (be careful of how heavy it gets.)
Don't Paint the Cat 