Still trying to get the body regulated after yesterday’s race so figured it was a good time to ummm how should I put it … put myself up for public shaming. At least some major chastising from my male friends thanks to a little project I completed last weekend. I was going to hold off on this until I could get it buried in a high output blog month but Linda has already announced the end product to the world thanks to Facebook and who knows when there will ever be a high output blog month – this is in light of the very apparent issue of it being near the end of the month and light on the entries so far this month. Using the band-aid principle, best to just get this over with and feel the heat (which technically brings us full circle since that is exactly what I did yesterday).
So, not a new revelation that I will often try to make something for Linda on special occasions. Not so much that I’m creative or really gifted at it as much as Linda rarely provides me any ideas on what to get her on these occasions. She’ll point to her Amazon Wish List as a source only to find out there isn’t really anything there that costs more than $2.50. She should really rename that to the I Wish Brian Total Frustration List. Knowing this is always an issue I swallowed my pride and looked to better resources for ideas. I had read about Pinterest and was aware that was predominantly a female hangout. If you want to take pictures of exotic animals you go to the zoo so it seemed logical if you want craft ideas for women.. go to the zoo.. I mean where the crafty women are. I won’t go into the long drawn out story of getting into that site and sifting through way to much content to finally find the craft sources. What I did easily find is a storm of references to a craft idea related to Nail Polish Flowers. There were hundreds of links that eventually all ended up at a non-English site called guang.taobao.com (link here). Clearly there was nothing on this site I could actually interpret and it essentially just had a set of pictures somewhat outlining how to do it. Intrigued, I “pinned” it for future reference not expecting to have to use it less than a week later. Sure enough the calendar gods tricked me into thinking there was plenty of time before our anniversary (funny how that is becoming a general theme across all aspects of my life). When realization set in it was too late to pry out any suggestions from Linda so went with the standard mega-flowers option and set to work on something more creative as icing on the cake. Still being fresh in memory, the recent pin came to mind and plans were set in motion.
The project seemed relatively simple – raid you wife’s vanity for nail polish, run to Menards for some wire, grab a few basic tools and 10 minutes later have a cool gift she will forever cherish. This early assessment turned out to be a completely WRONG. I did find some nail polish without Linda finding out (that would have been a difficult discussion) and even found some thin gauge wire at Menards – silver as well as green figuring it would work well for the stem. Grabbed some pliers, a drumstick, a piece of wax paper and went to work.
Note, the three to the far right were the items I procured from Linda’s vanity, the three on the left were future purchases as a result of wanting to try out some additional ideas to put my stamp on the idea. Linda found it quite amusing helping me pick out some options at the local drugstore.
Hit the jump to read about how to make them and some shots of the finished product
