Dragon

marius, I use regular old broadcloth for them. I usually get mine fabric from the remnants section cause it's cheap. My honey's mom is into quilting and she give me piles of leftover fabric from her projects. I sew them into fairly simple shapes, mice, cats, horses etc. Most have yarn braids for tails and legs. I use a little bit of catnip (I get really good stuff that's very leafy and fragrant) and stuff the rest with stuffing. I have been using plain old stuffing, my mom's dog love to destroy stuffies so she always save the stuffing and gives it to me. I'm keen to try out this alpaca stuffing and see what kind of a reaction I get. I sell them at the Farmers market here in town and also at the vet clinic I work at. They seem to go over very well.

marius

Thanks dragon! Won't tell how much I've spent on kitty toys - but one of the cat fav's is a drawstring I pulled out of a pair of shorts! That's a big message right there! Never thought of making toys - we'll see what I come up with. THANKS again!!!

sheftali52

Glad to hear Baldur is working on his gateleg table with ebony stain. Sheftali bought a clawfoot table years ago and tried to restore it. It had been painted orange (yuck!), and she had to work hard to strip the awful paint. The wood is not elegant (pine), but the table is a dropleaf with brass claw feet. Sheftali did a poor job with the finishing sanding, and there are still telltale swirls on the top of the table. However, the medium brown stain and tung oil have diminished the swirls somewhat. Sheftali really should re-do the table, just for the sake of perfection. A fall/winter project, perhaps.

Baldur

Staining can be very difficult, the transparency of the color makes a stroke in the wrong direction very obvious.
This table had at least 12 layers of paint, all variations of off-white.
The legs were turned on a lathe and are very elaborate, it took quite some effort to get every last bit of paint off.
Once the hinges that held it together were clear of paint I was able to take the table apart which helped quite a lot.
So as it stands now in un-assembled form Baldur has:
1 very narrow 4 legged table with turned cross-bracing
2 very nice -sized side leaves, and
2 gate-legs, elaborately turned to match the regular legs in pattern.
All 5 pieces have now received their first coat of ebony stain, but they are far from the same color yet.
The legs absorbed the color rapidly and are very dark, the flat surfaces have so far remained much lighter. Everything will get a second coat, but Baldur foresees giving the lighter areas a third and possibly fourth going over to get the finish dark enough to match.
Then the whole thing will be re-assembled and the coats of varnish will go on.
Heavens

sheftali52

Twelve layers of paint? Sheftali should not complain about the 2 layers of paint on her humble project--the first color was yellow, perhaps more horrid than the final orange. Orange??? Who in their right mind would paint a perfectly nice wood table orange??? Ebony stain sounds very cool.

Baldur

I remember when Baldur's Mother purchased the table back in the mid70s. It was a perfectly nice deep brown color, but did she want to leave it alone? Nooooooooo.
She painted it 'Ivory', but didn't like it. The color wasn't exactly what she wanted.
So she painted it 'off white', and the 'French Vanilla', and then 'beach sand', 'pale flesh', 'buttered biscuit', 'whipped cream', 'antique lace', 'buttermilk' etc etc.
Then it typical retro style she added large decals that looked like theorem painted cabbage roses in avocado and dull bronze.
Such was the era.
The table is going into a the newly refurbished family room. One of the few pieces that is returning.
Robert suggested we place the flat screen television on it. That idea does slightly horrify Baldur who would much prefer both of our televisions to be donated to people who would enjoy them. Then I would be able to place a nice old linen and needlelace cloth diagonally across the folded table with perhaps my 1870's tea service atop it all..
Compromise is the way it works however. The table remains to shine in a starring role at some future time.
Robert was kind enough to give up the last of the 1980's dreadful wingchairs with the shiny poly-velvet upholstery.
When Baldur moved in there were 6 of those horrors, 2 in burgundy, 2 in royal blue and 2 in forest green. EEK

Baldur

+n=then
-t+n=in
-a
-.+;

Dragon

I must say all those paint colours sound like lovely shades of off-white except for 'Pale Flesh'. I think that is the most disturbing name for a paint colour I've ever heard

Dragon

We recently repainted the exam rooms at the clinic. We got all of room 2 and most of room 1 done before we ran out of paint. So the doctor ran down to the paint store to get more of the same paint. So we complete painting room 1 and allow it to dry only to find (to our horror- we were all quite sick of painting at this point and our Dr. is a paint nazi about perfection) that the second can of paint was 'Lambskin' and the first can was 'Dusty Road' . They were both lovely colours but could not co-exist on te same wall. It seems the paint store was supposed to give us 'Lambskin' in the first place, and indeed their records show that's what they did give us, but somewhere there was a miscommunication. It was frustrating!

Baldur

Baldur always prefers an actual antique in less than perfect repair to a factory made modern reproduction.
Not to say I do not like newer things as well.
Baldur it seems has a bit of a lamp fetish.
I love old lamps, new lamps, and especially odd lamps.
Last year at an antique store there was the most beautiful bridge lamp that had a small sculpted seahorse in a cartouche at the top, it was very much in need of restoration and followed me back to Chez Baldur.
It did howver lose the 1950s fibreglass shade.
I added an appropriate brass fitter ring so that it could once again hold a glass globe.
Then I went to eBay.
Baldur should stay away from eBay, honestly he should.
I found a milky white globe the shape of a single lily of the valley bud.
It had odd stripes that varied from satiny silver-white, to an almost translucent palest milky blue, and by that I mean 'blue' in only the vaguest hint of a way.
The seller was claiming it to be an unsigned piece of Favrile by Louis Comfort Tiffany. One should never believe such things without documentation, but here it was beguiling me. He was asking $80 USD, an awful lot, but only a fraction of what it would get as a signed piece.
Baldur thought it marvelous but not believing it could actually be Favrile.
Of the many pieces I've seen in books and museums, never has there been a white on white color combination.
So I researched a bit more.
I found that reproduction Favrile shades could be found for about $200 USD.
So even if the white shade were a blatant fake it was priced well.
Baldur bought it.
I hope the seahorse lamp appreciates the gesture.

Baldur

+e=however

Baldur

I hope you did eventually get the correct shade to finish the project.

Baldur

One of the Christmas gifts that Baldur gave Miss Ashleigh Noelle (his beloved daughter) was a pair of table lamps that he lovingly customized.
I bought a pair of rectangular wooden lamps that were painted a dull black on final clearance at Target for about $3 each. Then I bought a set of Tarot cards and decoupaged random cards onto every side, covering them almost completely. Over this I brushed several coats of clear finish.
She was quite happy with them

Dragon

Yes, we ended up painting the entire front entrance and room 1 'Lambskin' and left room 2 'Dusty Road'. The only problem is that we had to do a little touch up work around the window frame in the door and we only had 'Lambskin' left (someone left the lid off the 'Dusty Road') so the touchups are quite noticable but less so than the dark blue that had run through the painters tape. Shockingly our paint nazi doctor didn't make us re-do the whole thing. I think he was getting irritated with the whole situation too.

I love the sound of a Tarot card lamp set! You must have a pretty cool daughter.

Baldur

She is quite a unique young lady, always had a taste for the Gothic side of life.
Baldur likes to think he was responsible for having rather odd children

indigo

Ashleigh Noelle...what a beautiful name!

Dragon

Hey man, normal is boring. I revel in my oddness.

Normal

Normal is the name of my town and comes nowhere near describing my condition! By the by, stay alert for some coming Toshiba ads where citizens of Normal, IL competed with those of Boring, OR to appear and gain computers.

Baldur

Heavens, Normal vs. Boring.
I see very few commercials, so if this competition makes it to television Baldur will most probably miss the excitement

Baldur

and here we have another milestone, 1300 comments on this thread.
'All Baldur, All the time'
According to Thinkdraw statistics there have been a grand total off 11,014 comments on these Forum pages.
So Channel Baldur is responsible for over 1/9 of all the comments.
This should frighten all of you.
We should throw a celebratory Cream Pie at matthew.