Tag Archives: Lewis yard art

August 31, 2017 · 11:38 am

Thing Two – Tower for Critters

We had an extra section of tower when we got the parts for our ham radio tower awhile back. My husband had put it in the pile of stuff we would take to the next city clean-up. I suggested we use it to display some of the critters we make.

My husband made a form recently and dug the hole a couple of days ago. Yesterday we got 4 bags of Ready-Crete, mixed them up and poured the concrete for the tower. This pic shows the project before we started mixing the concrete.

 

Here’s a close-up of the hold before the concrete was poured.

We plan to attach things like shovel birds, dragonflies, and other weird things we make to the tower at various points. The tower is beside our ‘watermelon’ propane tank and will greet people when they get to the top of our driveway.

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July 14, 2017 · 10:22 am

Propane

You wouldn’t think a guy coming to fill the propane tanks would be fun, would you. We had the best time two days ago when the man came up the driveway.

First, he made sure we wanted fill-ups on both tanks (we have a 1,000 gallon tank for the house and a 250 gallon tank for the shop). Then he turned to his truck to get started and stopped, and started to laugh. He looked at us delightedly and said, “Oh, this is wonderful! I wish all my customers were so creative!”

 

We told him that it wasn’t OUR creativity, that we had seen this on the Internet and decided we wanted to try it. He said he didn’t care, he thought it was GREAT.

We’re still walking around about 3 inches off the ground from his nice pat on our heads. :0)

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May 6, 2017 · 3:48 pm

The Fedex Man

Fedex

Last evening our Fedex man brought us a delivery.

He jumped out of the truck with a serious look on his face. He looked at me and said, “You should sell this stuff.”  When I looked a bit blank, he added, “My wife and I just joined an artists group and they’re going to have shows. You and your husband should bring your artwork and sell it. I bet it would sell really well.”

 

Well, THAT made our day! :0)

We discovered that his wife is into interior design and furniture, and apparently has a real gift for decorating. But then he started talking about our critters again. I told him that it was harder and harder to find scrap metal. We used to be able to go to a junk yard and prowl around, gathering things that looked interesting. We did that at auto salvage places, too. Now, due to liability issues, no one will let you prowl around anymore. Sometimes we luck into things, but it really has limited our critter making.

He told us he would be on the lookout for interesting scraps and would bring them to us when he found them.

Isn’t he wonderful?

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October 15, 2016 · 3:01 pm

Refurb of Taylor’s Shovel Bird Complete

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This poor shovel bird was desperately in need of some attention after standing out in the Taylor’s yard for several years. I wish we could figure out a way to combat the effects of sun and weather better, but so far, we haven’t.

His refurbishment started with pulling off the remaining google eye. I wiped him down to get excess debris off and then gave him a scrubby bath – first with Simple Green, then with soap and water, and finally with “Pre” a spray-on degreaser that makes paint adhere to metal better. I put fresh primer paint on the spots that had rusted, then repainted the mail colors.

 

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I used a metallic pen to do his ‘feathers.’  When the painting was dry, I sprayed him with polyurethane to protect the new paint as much as possible.

 

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The last step was gluing on new googly eyes. I used Liquid Nails as a glue, then held them tight with clothes pins and heavy rubber bands until completely dry.

We’ll take him to the Taylors this Monday evening, when we pick them up to go bowling!

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October 10, 2016 · 1:46 pm

Shovel Bird Refurb Project – Take 1

 

We made a shovel bird for our good friends, the Taylors, and gave it to them several years ago. Mother Nature has done a number on him, as she always does, making it necessary for some serious refurbishment. I’ve taken pics of the sweet bird BEFORE I start cleaning and repainting him.

 

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One of his googly eyes fell off, and his beak looks like it was never painted.

 

 

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Even with using rust resistant paint and then spraying on several coats of polyurethane, there are patches of rust. Of course, he’s dirty, also, having stood in the garden, weathering wind, rain, sun, and snow.

 

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The first thing I did was pull the other eye off. Then I spent a long time cleaning him from top to bottom with Simple Green. Now I’ve painted the first coat of paint.

It will probably take two or three coats of paint, then I’ll use a silver pen to do the ‘feathers.’ I’ll paint on some polyurethane, rather than using just the spray, for as much protection as possible, and finally, I’ll glue new googly eyes on him.

I’ll take pics when he’s ready to go back to the Taylors.

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August 22, 2016 · 2:51 pm

Lewis Metal Yard Critters – Take 6

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This sun face is HUGE and HEAVY. I was afraid my husband would hurt himself trying to lift it onto the humongous hanger we put on the tree. We made some templates and cut out each ‘flame’ separately and then welded each to the round sun face. The eyebrows, nose, mustache, lips and beard + sunglasses are all separate pieces, as well. After all the pieces were welded, I began the painting. The final part was making and attaching the sunglasses. The tree is toward the top of our driveway. He greets all comers. :0)

 

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This is my husband’s design for a butterfly. (No light, delicate, ‘sissy’ butterflies for HIM!) This is made totally from scrap metal pieces welded together, plus old satellite dish arms. The eyes were made by cutting a rubber ball that had ‘studs’ on it in half. I painted the ball halves black, then dabbed paint on all the studs in iridescent green, then sprinkled glitter into the wet paint.

 

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This dragonfly clown hangs from the ceiling in the shop. He’s made from scrap metal, some round glass for his eyes, and welding rod for feelers.

 

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We bought this wonderful turtle from a shop in Van Buren, Arkansas. He was totally concrete colored – much too tame for our tastes. I mixed up several shades of green and painted his shell, plus gave him an eye, a mouth, some toenails, and a bit of webbing on his legs.

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August 5, 2016 · 10:21 am

The Watermelon Tank is Finished!

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My friend Carla came and helped me do the light green base coat It took me two evenings to finish the darker green (almost looks blue, doesn’t it?)

 

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It’s not as good as the picture from which I was working, but few things are. That doesn’t bother me.

 

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I couldn’t bear to repaint the tank white. It was truly boring and ugly – except that it was filled with propane, which we love.

 

 

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Now, at least, it’s different. I can wait until the UPS delivery guy sees it. He laughed out loud when he heard our plans. :0)

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July 31, 2016 · 2:32 pm

Propane Painting Project – Cleaning

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We used the pressure washer to get the tank as clean as possible. We got the front and both ends, but ‘somehow’ missed the back… I got out and cut off a gazillion branches that were either hanging over the tank, almost touching it, or making it so we couldn’t even think about doing anything with the back.

 

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While I was pruning and weeding in the front yard yesterday,  my good husband did the rest of the pressure washing, so the tank is now as clean as it will ever be. You can see where we need to prep before we paint, scraping off peeling paint.

 

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If the weather will give us a bit of a break – it’s really sunny with a heat index of almost 100 degrees F out there right now – my husband will remove the dome. We’ll tape baggies over the gauges and put down some kind of protection for the concrete pad.

The first step in the actual painting is to paint the whole thing a light shade of green. My husband said he would try to set up the paint sprayer so that it feeds right out of the can, rather than our having to stop over and over again to refill the sprayer.

With any luck, we’ll have a 1000 gallon light green tank the next time I take a picture!

Here’s the ‘watermelon’ design we’re trying to emulate – found on the Internet –

 

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July 26, 2016 · 4:45 pm

Lewis Metal Yard Art – Take 4

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This (of course) is a box turtle. He’s made from a box, cut metal pipe, sheet metal cut out for the feet, tail, ears and nose. His eyes are cut glass.

 

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This is a turkey. His body is a 25 gallon propane tank. His legs and feet are rebar. His head is a tooth from an agricultural implement. His cockscomb is rolled strap steel. His neck is pipe and the wings and tail are cut out sheet metal.  He has googly eyes.

 

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This “daisy” with stem and leaves is over 6 feet tall. The flower is about 2 feet across, with all parts, except the stem, cut from scrap metal. The center of the flower is an upside-down plastic pot covered with circles of glass.

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July 14, 2016 · 5:08 pm

Lewis Metal Yard Critters – Take 2

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“Flying Pig”

You’ll see our flying pig as you come up the driveway. He twists and turns as the wind blows. He’s made of a 25 gallon propane tank, pipe, and sheet metal, plus googly eyes.  Several years ago we decided that pigs were – indeed – flying!

 

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“Janitor Penguin”

Our hard-working janitor penguin is made from a 25 gallon propane tank, some kind of disk vehicle part for the head, part of an oil can for a hat, pipe, weird farm implement scraps, old fireplace tools, a pair of my husband’s shop gloves, googly eyes, and a bow tie we got on the net.  He stands to one side of our garage door.

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July 9, 2016 · 4:19 pm

Lewis Metal Yard Critters – Take 1

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We have a gate we can close across the bottom of our driveway. It has two long metal pipes – one on either side of the driveway. We made these owls, whose dimensions are approximately 2-1/2 feet high by about 1-1/2 feet wide. They’re mainly painted thick, heavy metal. The eyes have two sizes of car reflectors, so they light up at night when light hits them.

 

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In front of the owls, closer to the bottom of our 650 foot STEEP driveway is our greeter robot.

His torso is a large exhaust pipe from a huge farm implement. His arms and legs are various sized pipes welded together. His head is scrap metal. His eyes are car reflectors. His mouth is a piece of scrap metal welded to the head and painted. The hand that holds our address sign is a shovel. His upper hand doffs his hat. He has a yellow antenna type thing sprouting from the top of his head. His feet are huge, heavy blocks of metal. He’s over 6 feet tall. He weighs a LOT, so we wrestled him into the truck in 4 pieces and assembled him where he stands at the side of the driveway. He has a heavy chain around his neck attached to the pole behind him to keep him from falling over.

Also at the bottom of the driveway is our mailbox, for which we’ve made lots of decorations.

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