The New Hobbyist

…But I do like crayons.

One of my best memories from grade school was popping open a new box of 24 Crayola Crayons on the first day of school. Who doesn’t love a nice fresh box of new crayons? I even like watching mini-documentary films on how they’re made (Thanks Sesame Street)!

I found a great post about using a big box of crayons and some heat to make a neat melted wax art piece for your wall on r/DIY.

The supplies needed for this are pretty cheap:

• 1x Big box of crayons, I used a 64 pack of Crayola Crayons
• 1x Piece of black post board
• 1x Shadow box
• hot glue gun
• heat gun

1. Sort your crayons in a visually pleasing pattern (I sorted by label color, followed by crayon color).
2. Hot glue crayons in a line as level as possible on black poster board.
3. Align the poster board so the wax runs following the path you desire.
4. Pull out your handy dandy heat gun and begin slowly melting the crayons. If you go too fast the hot glue will let go and you’ll have to go chase hot crayons.
5. Glue the poster board into the shadow box.
6. Stick it up on the wall and enjoy!

 
I’m fairly happy with how this turned out, although there is one thing that makes me want to re-do the whole thing. I didn’t do a very good job of measuring the poster board before cutting it so everything is about an inch too far to the right. Let that be a lesson: measure twice, cut once!
 

I’m always looking for cool editions for my man cave, I don’t have a lot of space so I aim for quality over quantity. Last weekend I found these incredibly cool reproduction “Edison Style” light bulbs on Amazon and knew they could earn a spot in the man cave. The bulb was too cool to just throw in a lamp, I had to incorporate the old timey style of the reproduction bulb in the fixture it would live in. So I headed to one of my homes away from home, Home Depot. While there I picked up the following:

20′ 14 gauge, 2 conductor SO Cord (rubber coated wire)
1x Rubber coated light socket
1x Two pronged plug
1x Package of 3M Command hooks

Included in the gallery you can see my construction log. Because I was really going for a simple vintage look this was not a very complicated build. Here are my step by step instructions:

1. Solder the socket and SO cord together and cover the connections in heat shrink
2. Screw the other end of the SO cord into the two pronged plug
3. Test the electrical connections (I used an ordinary CFL for this)
4. Hang the SO cord using Command hooks
5. Plug into switched light switch or totally awesome wirelessly controlled plug strip
6. Be the coolest kid you know

 
The hanging SO cord doesn’t look quite like I had envisioned due the the stiffness of the cord, but in all I’m happy with the results.