nail holder cd rack

i have a lot of cds...i'll probably never have a place to put them all. until i can bear to part with (some of) them, i am forced to find stylish yet accessible storage. my mother gave me this antique wooden box with lots of compartments. she told me it was used in hardware stores to display various sizes of nails.

i'm sure it would look cool hanging on the wall vertically or horizontally. i'm not very handy, though, and i'd probably rip the sheetrock right off the wall.

the metal bands reinforce the wooden dividers.

another batch of cds saved from being stored in a cardboard box!

nice cans - juice can pen holder

now and then i buy mexican fruit juice because it comes in apricot nector, guava, and other flavors which go great with champagne for a delicious mimosa. this can had a nice, curvy shape. a few ideas popped into my head, like using the cans as legs for furniture. they are fairly sturdy since they seem to be made of steel rather than aluminum, and they could be filled with concrete so they’ll support a lot of weight.

covered with colorful printing, the can was a little too ornate. plus it looked like something that should go into the recycle bin. i have no power tools to sand it, so i scraped the paint off with an old pair of scissors for the brushed metal look. this took way too long and made awful screechy noises, but i am happy with the results.

a can opener removed one end of the can, and i glued that piece down inside the can to make it heavy on the bottom so pens won’t tip it over. some felt glued to the bottom keeps the pens from clanking too much when you drop them in, too. work isn't always the most nurturing place, so i like to surround myself with creative junk to keep up the old spirits.

sculpting with gum

remember the stalactites of gum beneath the desks at school? it is a crime how useless gum becomes the minute the flavor is gone. yet it's still so colorful…and moldable. i made various things from gum during my teen years. i started putting my "abc gum" - that's "already been chewed" - on a coaster with the intention of making something out of it, but the gum kept stacking up until it was getting tall. to offset the phallic quality, i added arms to transform it into a gum saguaro cactus. i sort of smeared the gum so it would look like it's melting. i wonder what the inside would look like if it was sawed in half. don't be fooled into thinking since it's gum that it's soft. you would not want to sit on this in your parachute pants.

that reminds me of a story i heard from some musicians about a female drummer they had (her gender is irrelevant to the story). she brought in her drums and set them up. then she sat down (hard) on her stool, but she had not yet screwed the seat on, so it was just a big screw sticking up. from what i heard, her jeans were no barrier. hospital time.

moving on. try to shake it off. this is a glass bowl which i covered in gum. dr. pepper made gum flavored like the soda, and that's what the maroon pieces are. the turquoise ones are green apple bubble gum, and the pale yellow is either gator gum (made by the gatorade people) or extra. the wrigley's looks like silly putty - the same as before it's chewed. i placed a penny head-down in the bottom of the bowl beneath the gum, so that from the bottom you can see the year the bowl was born.

i covered all of the gummy areas with a few clear coats of shellac so it's not sticky or germy. this thing is over 20 years old, and i still use it to hold odds and ends. while you're probably thinking it would make a wonderful candy dish, there are people who don't want to eat out of a bowl made from stuff i've chewed up.