Monday: Make, do, and mend

Boxing Day. And my tradition is to spend the day mending things.

(Embarrassingly, I recognise some chairs here from a post written on Boxing Day 2013. Obviously the tradition doesn't include mending everything that needs it...)

Since the workbench downstairs was fairly clear (and I was concerned that my latest scene was taking root on the top of my catalogue drawers), I decided to take a deep breath and try out the idea I'd had for my pipe shelving.

I rummaged through my wood supplies for a piece of wood to use as the base (you might recognise it from here), then through my bags of various-sized skewers and dowels until I found one the slid snuggly up the inside of the pipes. Which I cut to length.

Drilled two holes in the top of the base, slipped in the dowels in and packed them tight with the ends of toothpicks to keep them straight.

 And voila!

Sticking the shelves back on to the pipes was tricky because there isn't much surface to grip to, and I seem to have lost (used up, or thrown out as dead) my glue which is like Plasticine, which would be perfect for the job. And I'm not prepared to face the hardware store on the first day of the post-Christmas sales just for glue. So I had to improvise (and cross my fingers!).

I covered the existing wallpaper on the wall the pipe shelving as going to sit against with some black card. And did a (very successful) test run:

Phew. Perhaps this will clear the mental jam with the scene and things will flow smoothly from here on in (until I lose interest. of course...).