When one spends an entire year picking up marine debris on daily beach clean ups, one finds a lot of other cool, interesting, and otherwise noteworthy things.
Last winter, I collected a ton of beach snow fence that had fallen down in storms and washed up on my beach. I love the textures and patterns, and have been making little shelves, altars, shrines, frames, word art, even the cover to a book!, all sorts of things with it. This weekend I made a heart for my door, I mean, it’s February.
My husband liked it better without the ‘Love’ written in found rope (ALDFG), I’m still debating, plus I have no idea yet how I’ll attach it, lol, so for this Valentine’s Day, it will be simple. We’ll wait and see what happens next February!
It was a simple project. I cut out a heart template out of cardboard, I find it super hard to draw hearts, they always come out so lopsided, so cutting it out gave me a chance to rework it until I was happy with it. I also folded the cardboard in half so it would be even! I then laid the pieces of snow fence on it, checking to make sure I had all the good sides up, and drew around the heart with sharpie on the boards. I nailed a couple of boards across the back to hold it all together, using wood glue to keep it from falling apart! Once the glue had (mostly) dried, I’m super impatient, I wanted to do the project at that very moment, haha!, I cut along my lines with a band saw.
After cutting it, I went back and added an extra layer of glue between the back boards and the heart, snow fence is very wonky, it bends and warps and is all kinds of tricky, we thought it was a good idea to add a little extra support to the construction. The nail on my door is too high for this particular heart, and my husband doesn’t want additional holes, so we added a bit of twine to hang the heart from.
I think it looks pretty cute, and it was free (unless you count the nails and glue, which I don’t, haha). Not bad for a little #beachfindart.
On my @AYearofPlastic Instagram account, I’m asking people show their love of the planet by creating hearts with anything: beach debris, drawing in the sand, painting, their hands, just to get out there and show the world some love. Fill February with a little earth love. Protect her. Love her. Care for her. So I guess this counts for that too! Tag me if you post anything, and please use the hashtag: #HeartthePlanet.
xo Sarah
