The Better Letter Box

A pimped up letter box – keep the posts coming in!

Who said the old world charm of handwritten letters and posts no longer exists? If you have a funky little letter box at your door step, we’re sure that people would love to get their letters delivered to your home.

With a tattered old letter box as our starting point – we went about to deliver a totally new funky look to it. It all started with a coat of paint. Then to add some chutzpah, we stuck an eclectic color print on the letter box flap. The drama of the sticker completely lifts the mundane box. Now comes the fun bit – we slinged in two brown belts on either sides to give a buckled up bag effect.

With 3 simple steps we managed to totally quirk up this letter box. With this kind of a letter box - the old world charm of handwritten letters and posts still for sure exists!

A Concrete Jungle

Upcycle boring concrete into quirky décor

Concrete we all know is the most common and popular building material. The Romans were the first to prepare concretes’ recipe; a mixture sand, lime, water and air. This versatile and strong compound till date serves as the main ingredient for all kinds of constructions.

Since concrete can be poured into place as a liquid, but harden to resemble a material like natural rock, it makes a perfect building material. And this casting property of concrete makes it a very suitable material to make various décor items.


 

Check out these cool concrete décor ideas:
A simple concrete cast clock; Candle holder  - concrete in a cushiony form; Bee-hive shaped concrete coasters; Random geometric concrete décor blocks; Concrete moulded into a hanging lamp; A blooming solid concrete vase; Write your thoughts on concrete; Concrete maketh the perfect mobile chargingdock ; Cute little cup-cake succulent planters

 

Pour concrete in a container of any shape and allow it to harden, thus, becoming a simple way to create quirky décor items. From vases to clocks to lamps. This easy to use material is a brilliant DIY friend.

The best way to use concrete is to add a pop of color against its bland color and grainy texture. The grey, raw finish adds charm to any décor item

The Scribble Lamp

Metal wires randomly bent to make a whimsical lamp

The first thing we learnt when we were given a pencil in our hands was not to write… but to scribble. Don’t we all still love scribbling? Just pen and paper and our whimsical thoughts – with these 3 elements, we have all drawn many a master-piece. There are actual psychology tests, in which your state of mind is determined through the scribbling you do! Brilliant, right?

Why restrict scribbling to pen & paper. Thus, we decided to scribble up a decor lamp. All we require is a few meters of thin metal wire that can be easily bent with pliers. To start the scribbling process with the wire, simply keep on bending the wire at random intervals and in random directions. No kind of uniformity is required. It is literally like scribbling.

After the entire wire has been randomly bent, we will have a haphazard mass of wire. To give it a little structure, fluff the wire together and twine it up with thin wires. The eventual structure need not be well defined; it can be completely whimsical. Finally a bulb-cord is suspended in the middle of the wires.

This DIY actually had a de-stressing kind of effect. I wonder what our scribbling has to say about our state of mind?

Glow Willow from Below

A potted-leafless-branching tree, glows in a diffused-gold-bulbing undergrowth.

Leafless & lifeless branching trees have this ghostly beauty about themselves. The dendritic patterns & shadows create enchanting designs. I’ve always been spookily & creatively drawn to them, as I realize that these naked branches used just the way it is, can create quite a unique design experience.

The first task was to find the branch itself – which had just the right branching, just the right height and just the right strength. Boy! With an intense search of 13 days, 13 hours and 13 minutes – we finally found the perfect kind we needed.

Post getting the branch, we nicely cleaned it up - removed the years of dirt that settled on it. After the cleaning and drying, we touched it up with strokes of metallic gold paint. We painted it up to give our décor piece a more rich & suitable for home feel.

Once the branch was ready, we erected it in a simple cylindrical pot. The idea is to keep the pot as simple as possible, so that the natural beauty of the naked branch is not clashed with.

Our idea was to fill the pot brim with sprouting bulbs, so that the diffused light from below would subtly cast a golden-glow on the tree. In order to do that we firstly created a connection of the required 10 bulbs in parallel wiring (finally my class X physics come to use). The parallel connections seems at first difficult, but the idea is to just be sure that the same colored live wires are all connected together and the other colored neutral ones together, and all finally end in 2 terminal sources. Quite a few online tutorials are available to help better understand.

Post that we interspersed and injected these bulbs in a thick thermacol sheet. Being careful of the wiring always! The crate of thermacol & bulbs was then put around the branched tree. Since the wires are still visible, we put in small stones all over the pot and around the bulbs.

To finally reveal our masterpiece, just plug in and switch on the lights. Get aback… and absorb the beautiful-rich-soft-golden-glow of the haunted-leafless-branched-tree!

It is guaranteed to get you goose-bumps!

Always be careful when connecting multiple wires together. Be sure the the live and neutral wires never come in contact. Also wire-joints should be well connected and insulated. A quick and easy way is to twine the two ends of the wire and then add a drop of hot glue off the glue gun. Let it cool and dry. This will not only create a permanent joint but also create the required insulation.