It Only Takes a Spark!

Back in the day when I led Sunday School and Bible School at my church, I taught a song that started "it only takes a spark to get a fire going"...and that is pretty much what happened today...but figuratively not literally. I have a long to-do list of chores around the house but, it is Sunday, a day of rest, and even though I am retired and technically every day can be a day of rest, I am still stuck in my "work" routine where I think of the weekends as "time off" and have no problem leaving the list until tomorrow.

And so, what was I going to do today? It was still just a bit too cold to do anything outside and even if I wanted to, gardening is put off until I am pretty sure we won't have another frost. And because this happened yesterday to create a spark, and I actually impressed myself a bit yesterday when I made that vintage looking spool out of the two wood thread spools and the base-lol,I decided that I wanted to come up with another "spool" craft to do today but it should be for St. Patrick's Day.

Of course, that sent me to my inside St. Pat's storage to look for shamrock shapes.

 And then eventually here where I had already started to gather up my supplies.

I thought I had used a $Tree wood shamrock last year and could trace it but I was wrong...both of the larger shamrocks I had would be too large to use on the spool so I had to resort to trying to come up with my own shamrock shape-which is a LOT harder than you would think. At least it was for me. You can't just start with the larger one and cut it down because the whole shape somehow gets affected. 

In any case, since that was my only choice, my next decision was what to make the shape out of. Normally I would do foam core but decided to go with corrugated cardboard this time and to rip off some of the face of the cardboard. Then it just got a rough coat of paint and some distressing around the edges.

I had to jerry-rig another shamrock that was smaller so it would fit inside the larger one. Once I accomplished that I cut one out of cardboard and then the scrapbook paper that I chose to use.

I glued the layers together and got the base shamrock glued on to a dowel. That was a bit trickier than I had thought of because I wanted the stem of the shamrock to come down the front of the spool so, if I just glued the dowel on flat, there would not have been enough room for that to happen. As luck would have it, I saw a clothespin in my wood container and took it apart leaving me a sort of wedge shape which turned out perfectly for adhering the dowel-it stood out further on the bottom so there was enough clearance to get over the edge of the top of the spool but then went down to almost flat for the rest of the dowel. The back looked a mess but I cut a piece of green paper and just glued it over everything and, unless you are looking right at the back-which you shouldn't be-all is good.

Next, I ripped some fabrics and cut some ribbon and went with a messy bow again.

I wasn't sure where I was going to place the bow but I knew I wanted to have it somewhere where I didn't cover the shape of the shamrock or the dowel that I had worked so hard to have visible. I ended up putting it near the bottom and, as you can see, trimming it shorter and shorter until I was happy. I probably trimmed off enough ribbon to make a whole other bow. Lol Then, I was going to make a little tag but happened upon some embellishments left over from my scrapbooking days and went with them.

I'm not guaranteeing that I won't tweak this a bit more before I am decorating for St. Pat's Day but, for now, I'm good with it. Actually, as I just re-read this before posting I got the brilliant idea of hitting the edges of the shamrocks with some gold-we shall see.

Our weather has warmed up a bit and the danger of a freeze this week seems to be gone so I am off to take the sheets off of the plants and give everything a good drink of water, Then, I noticed some branches in my side yard that must have come down with a recent storm so I need to get them out on the curb for pick-up tomorrow. I can't believe that I still haven't taken you on the rest of our tour but I'll be back soon and we'll get it done. Stay safe and stay tuned.

P.S. So, for my betting friends...LOL

I went ahead and hit it with a little bit of gold-you knew I would didn't you? I still might not be done but we're definitely getting closer.