One Man's Trash - Wine Barrel Wood Projects

 

"One man's trash, is another man's treasure."

 

   The Wife and I have been working on some wood pallet projects lately. You can see some of what we have cooking on our Etsy shop. It's been a fun way to stay creative, pass time while watching the kids play out front, and so on which I've posted on Reclaimed Wood Projects. Our gardener saw us working in the garage one day and informed us that he did some landscape work at the local wine vineyards. He offered to bring us old wine barrels that were, in his words, "falling apart anyway, and just going to get thrown out." Enter The Cheeky Daddy.

 

   I had visions of weaving, lining them up for a new kind of canvas to paint on, etc. Then naturally I went on Pinterest to see what else inspired. I was not disappointed. Our gardener mentioned that he himself had made some benches out of them. The lids have the logo of the vineyard they are from on one end, and other cool looking text on the other. It set my creative mind ablaze and I haven't been able to get them out of my mind since.

 

   This illustrates the core of the "one man's trash" saying. Like discarded wood pallets, these wood barrel destined for landfill, inspire something more in people like us. I'm grateful that people we know see the potential and offer their "trash" to us to make something new out of it. The saga continues and be on the lookout for when we finally complete our first projects with these barrels of the forgotten. Geez, that sounds like a Nicholas Sparks novel.

 

J. 



Treasure Maps

Andy: Do you think there's really any treasure here? 

Mikey: Andy this whole ship is a treasure.

- The Goonies (1985)

   I've always wanted to do a treasure map, ever since I was a wanna-be Goonie. I remember the Map of One Eyed Willie oh so well. I did a small, lame one a few weeks back that went over extremely well with my older two pirates. They begged for another. So we found the right treasure, that the kids were kind of in need of for their rooms anyway, and I set to creating the map. This took me about two days of minimal time in between stuff. 

   I started with pencil, to map out the rooms with a ruler. I then penned them in with Micro pens (ohhh....I've got a thing for these pens...). I did some tracing and some lettering for the letters that would eventually lead the kids to the "treasure". I did some water color to give that "weathered" look. It ended up better than I thought it would. 

   The treasure hunt was fun. My 'Lil Miss was going way to fast, so I had to carry the 'Lil Man a bit. I put sticky diamonds in the locations where the letters would be in each room. After they were found, they were numbered so they would spell a sentence of where the final treasure location would be. The hunt was super fun for the kids and lasted around 15-20 minutes. I know I can add layers to add more time. A word find, maze, etc., would help, but this was my first attempt. I know we're all at different levels of creativity, but anything will do. The kids are worth it, as they are our treasures. Have fun!

J.