A light post full of love – how to add unique and personal elements to your yard and home
We all have them. Little momentos in drawers, jewelry boxes, shelves. For us they were sitting collecting dust and rarely looked at, shoved out of the way and not part of our daily visual.
When we moved into our house there was still a post from an old deck that had been torn down. For the first year here we hung bird feeders from it, but once our waterfall pond was finished we knew that post had more of a story to tell.
Here is how we created this lamp post full of personal momentos and whimsy.
- We created a post wrap that was 4 – 2″x6″ treated boards. Screwed together to leave a 4″x4″ opening inside. This also allowed me to lay the post down in our living room and work on a side at a time.
- We collected mosaic tiles, glass beads, fish bowl rocks, moments, broken necklaces, souvineer spoons, rocks, and all sorts of things that could withstand the outdoors. If you are wanting to use a mirror here is how to easily break a mirror without making a huge mess. Find a hard surface and put a layer of newspaper down. Then the mirror then more newspaper. Then use a hammer and starting gently tap the mirror. You can also place something small under the mirror like a pebble or coin before you hammer it. Lift up the top layers of newspaper to check on the mirror and continue this to create as small of pieces as you prefer. Then you can lift the larger pieces off as needed or put them in a container and gently lift the bottom layer of newspaper fold to contain all glass fragment then pour into garbage.
- We bought Liquid Nails for interior or exterior use.
4. Working in less than an 8 inch spaces at a time, squeeze the liquide nails onto the wood, thinner if it’s for a flat mosaic, thicker if you’ll be sticking on heavier or odd shaped items. Use a flat sides tool to spread the glue.
5. You can work in patterns, or shapes, secret things like initials or messages. We put our address on one side, another side had a favorite necklace of mine that had broken, a pendant of my mom’s, my grandmothers necklace, a collector spoon I got at the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta, rocks from people and places. It was full of an unfolding and telling of our journey; past and future.
5. Once a side was filled up and dried, there were places where I went in and filled in gaps, between items, essentially grouting with liquid nails. If this was a flat mosaic with uniformed thickness then I would have filled with grout. To do that; you’d attach pieces, wait to dry then scoop group onto top and use flat edget to smooth into cracks and openings. IMPORTANT: use a damp cloth and wipe down surface will grout is still moist. This will clean off the surface of your glass, mirror or tile pieces. It may take a few times of wiping gently and rinsing the rag and doing it again. Otherwise you’ll be left with a layer of grout over the top of your piece that’ll be incredibly difficult to remove later. Once the piece is dry you’ll go back over it again with a damp rag to remove the dusty residue coating the piece. You’ll then want to find a high quality grout sealer to protect your grout from absorbing rain, dirt, pollen, or other things.
Before and After of the pond area and post.
6. Once our post was complete we slipped the wrapped post over our 4″x4″ post, topped it with a
board and attached a large solar lantern.
7. Use this technique for other fun things too; furniture like side tables, dressers, bird baths, gazing balls and more. Here are a few examples that I have made or others have made:
This gazing ball was a very special gift given to me. After my mother passed away my mother in law had gotten my mom’s bowling ball and bag. Without telling me she secretely used my mom’s china pieces, the tag from her bag and more and glued them all to my mom’s bowling ball. To this day, it’s one of my favorite things. So much thought from my mother in law and a piece of my mom not stored in a bag in our garage but our in our yard glowing everyday in the sunlight. Adding joy to our days.
Hope this gives you some ideas on how you can use things laying around your house to make some fun meaningful goodies.
