Cool Flower

Sometimes nature does the unexpected.

After a week in a vase, we had some flower stems decide to curl back in four directions:

Mobile

Everyone picks up seashells from the seashore, right? Well we did to thinking we would make a mobile out of them. Fast forward two years and we finally got around to making it ;)

The easiest way of finding the balanced midpoint is to put each of your index fingers at opposite edges of the stick, then move them inward. Volia! They arrive together at the center of mass.

Just a nicely balanced collection of seashells.

And the close-up.

'Origami' Bookshelf

If you haven't seen Frank Lloyd Wright's Origami chair, you should. Legend says each chair comes from a single sheet of 8x10' plywood cut and remade into a chair. Needless to say I wanted one as soon as I saw one. Unfortunately they're not for sale :(

So I did what I could. Inspired from the chair I decided to start a bit smaller with my own 'origami bookshelf' from some leftover wood.

We'll start by slicing the old piece of leftover wood in half. One half goes to the shelves and the other to the legs. Then we'll cut slots halfway through so they can slot into each other. There are some small adjustments I had to make as I went on, but I'll let the pictures speak for me.

The leftover wood piece.

Marking up the slots.

After the cuts.

Checking that everything fits.

The pieces individually.

Assembled lying down.

Assembled standing up. There is a bit of a tilt to the setup, 

resulting in a leg being trimmed towards the end.

Also I thought that the second shelf angled with respect to

the first and to the ground.

Prepping for the stain.

Turns out stain can polymerize if
left exposed to air and alone.

Done with staining, you may have noticed an extra piece.

The extra piece helps maintain the shelf separation.