Monday, July 2, 2012

Repurposed Garden Orb

Hot.

Hot.

Hot.

That's all I have to say today.

Just kidding.  I've spent hours working in the garden.  Planning, planting, dreaming.  Now everything is wilting.  I did some pretty zealous weeding last weekend and discovered the next day that there is poison ivy or poison oak lurking somewhere in my backyard that I overlooked.  It made its way into my garden gloves.  Oddly, it doesn't itch too badly, but with my skin type, it's going to leave a nasty scar on the back of my hand.  There goes my dreams of being a hand model.

In my early gardening days, I loved hanging baskets.  I still do, but I don't even try them anymore.  Everything in them seem to wither in the hot Kansas winds.  Years ago, I tossed the coconut liners and abandoned the wire baskets on the top shelf of the garage.


I've seen several DIY orbs in blogland this summer, like this orb chandelier from Ballard Designs.   I love the shape, but I think these sort of lights throw off weird shadows.  Then a few weekends ago, I was doing a garage sale drive-by.  Is it worth getting out of my air-conditioned car?  I thought I saw something, a sundial or a ornamental orb for the garden?  I turned around for another look and realized it was just a stack of hanging baskets. 

But it got me thinking...I could take those old wire baskets in my garage, put two of them together with four black zip-ties, and I'd have a nice little orb.  I found an old curtain rod and finials at ReStore and made a trip to the hardware store for oversized washers to hold the whole thing together.  The washers received a quick blast of black spray paint.


Originally, I was going to use hot glue to hold the washers, but that wasn't working.  So I used black thread to keep the washers in place for the final assembly.  If I had four hands, I probably wouldn't have needed it because ultimately, the wire basket is squeezed between two washers, one on the inside and one on the outside of the sphere.  I rested one more washer at the bottom, just to add a more finished look.


I have two more hanging baskets in the garage and the other finial to make another orb, maybe when it cools down a little, like October.



I'm linking up...

5 comments:

  1. This is a GREAT idea! Those darn garden ornaments are way too expensive. It looks just super!

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  2. I love this idea -- wouldn't have thought about using a curtain rod and finial and to add washers to make the baskets into a garden ornament. I've got lots of places I could put these in the garden. Thanks for the inspiration.

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  3. Bought the finials/rods so far, four baskets to create two globes, and orange and aqua colors to make each one color. The rods are silver and the globes are black, ah, no. I happen to LIKE matchy-matchy. Will get the washers this weekend. Wondering what kind of washer you used to hold the globe up at the bottom?

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    1. I just used the largest washer I could find to cover the bottom hole and some glue to hold it in place. Check your local hardware store, one that sells hardware that you can buy individually rather than the big box retailers.

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