Greetings Hellions!
So since this gift has already been presented to my friend, I can finally share with you my trials and tribulations with this project.
A few months ago I stumbled upon this image while scrolling through the internet and thought it would be a wonderful gift for a friends upcoming birthday. She's very kitchen witchy, so I thought this would be perfect.
Looking at it, it didn't seem too diffucult to make on my own and handmade gifts are more valuable, right?
I went online and ordered a package of these wooden spoons. The package came with 12, but I only needed 5. So I figured I'd use the extra to make a second for another friends birthday later this year. (Hahaha, foolish me...)
My first instinct to start this project was just to glue the spoons together.
This. Was. A. Very. Bad. Idea.
Unless I wanted to steam, bend and shape the long handles, there was a gap between the handles an the backs of the spoons where they needed to be connected. Idiot me decided to just build up the glue to try and fill the gaps. This caused a huge, ugly, gob of glue on the back of each spoon. It never dried and I had to add strips of glue to try and re-tack everything down. This method went nowhere, the shape started to fall apart, and made me very frustrated.
I even used twine to try and hold the shape in place while it dried. This failed epicly.
So, time to go back to the drawing board.
The next idea I had was to break out my hand drill and add small screws through the handles to hold the shape.
This did not go as planned either...
As you can see, the screws split the wood of the spoons:
Okay, back to the drawing board again....
I was convinced that the screws were a solid idea, but how could I keep the wood from splitting? Then the idea it me: what if I drilled pilot holes through the spoons before hand? Luckily, I had those extra spoons from the package I order and started over. I re-measured and used the drill bits I had to drill holes through the spoon handles.
This actually worked! I was able to get the spoons to hold the pentacle shape and stay together. The only thing that I messed up on was using screws that were a smidge too long. Some went through the handle and the back of the spoon to poke out the front of the spoon. All I had to do was back out the screw a bit and try to sand out the blemish as best as I could.
The next step was to add the twine around the connection joints to ensure stability. After that, I bought some wood stain and went to town coating the spoons. The wood soaked up a LOT of the stain.
After letting the project dry all night, it was time to add the colorful flowers! I found this cluster of fake flowers at a local craft story and picked up some E6000 thinking that I could just cut the flowers down and glue them on.
Once again, the easiest things are the more troublesome....
Sadly the E6000 didn't work at all and created a huge, sticky mess. (With this project I think I've determined that I'm no good with adhesives.)
I abandoned the glue idea and bundled the flowers, then used the excess twine I had on hand to bind the flowers to the spoons. This was a lot of work, but I think it came out better in the end. I did use some of the E6000 to seal off the twine and bind it so that hopefully bits wouldn't come undone over time.
I also used the twine and glue to create a small loop to use to hang the piece. And here is the final product!
Lessons I learned about this project and things I'd do differently if I attempt again:
1. Plan out the length of the screws better.
2. When the wood stain dried, bits came out "stickly" looking. I'd research wood stains a bit more to try and avoid this finish.
3. Some parts of the spoons would not take the wood stain. You can see around the edges of the spoons that the edges are still very blond looking despite 6-10 coats of the stain.
4. I'd probably try to find thinner spoons to work with. The ones I purchased where thicker than I anticipated.