Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Death Star Nerd Shelf

The Death Star Nerd Shelf is not officially hung on the wall, but seriously, I can't wait one more second to show it to you!!!

So, so, SO much has happened since I was on the blog last time and posted that I was starting this silly shelf.  I worked the following 3 hours on the pattern on the computer, turned around, and discovered a tumor in my baby girls mouth.  Yep, A TUMOR!  Nightmare began.  Three days of crying later, we had a date set to get that lumpy thing cut out and we were on our way to a family Christmas party on Christmas Eve.  

I will tell you more about that all another time, but for now, here are my pics from the making of the Nerd Shelf.  Please ignore the junky background!!!!  It is the dead of winter here in Minnesota, plus I had just shut my Etsy shop down after the most INSANE selling season EVER.  

Nerd Shelf...So, I took a 4 foot x 4 foot piece of 1/4" mdf, found dead center, and had Madison help me draw a circle.  This ended up a 47" circle.

We cut that circle out, then Madison began to paint it grey while I cut out all the little black pieces from 1/4" mdf.  For a long time I was just going to cut them from black vinyl.  It would have been hours faster. In the end I decided the black pieces HAD to be cut from wood because, after sanding all the edges to a bevel, they would look so much cooler!  Hours later...I cut all the little pieces for the 9 rows of black pieces.  Madison painted them black while I worked on other gifts.


That is where everything sat from Monday night until Thursday night, Christmas Eve...or actually, Christmas Morning at about 2:30am.  That was the time Scott and I finally got everything out and under the tree.  I sent my hubby up to bed {since the nerd shelf was a gift for him AND my boy Eli} and I started to work on the shelf all by my lonesome.

I managed to come up with a way to staple the shelves to the circle.  It took me a good hour to figure out how to mark the grey circle, spacing all the shelves just right, cutting them to the right lengths.  This is what I did to hold the shelves in place....about a thousand clamps...2 kinds of clamps...and a drywall t-square and some extra hunks of wood.



Here I was, at about 6am on Christmas morning just getting ready to glue on the black pieces.  I marked the back of each one, before Mads painted them for me, with the {row-order in the row}.  I sorted them out by rows, then put them in order 1-whatever that goes on each row, then pulled out my woodglue and started squeezing.

Once all the black pieces were glued on, I grabbed a bunch of 2x4s from the garage and laid them on top to kind of press the smaller glued pieces of wood down onto the shelf.  I covered the whole thing with a giant blanket, then went upstairs to try and get 2 hours of sleep before the kids woke up.

After Eli and Scott opened all their Pop Vinyl Bobbleheads I quickly went in the other room, pulled the shelf from the table, and rolled it back to the Christmas tree.  The reaction was priceless!  Both Scott and Eli were so surprised and SO THRILLED!  The thing was not finished, but really was impressive.

Last night I was finally able to paint the shelves black and this morning I sprayed the whole thing with my 2x finishing spray.  Now that I have the shelf up on the table all ready to mount on the wall....I think I want to re-arrange the computer room...

So this sneak peek will have to do.  It will take me another week to get the room moved all around and get this shelf hung in it's official home.  I will post a pic once that is all done.  You will never believe the bobbleheads Madison and I found!  We had a little too much fun with this present this year!

Novelty Print Quilt Pattern

I have had a hard time finding good quilt patterns for novelty prints the past couple times I purchased them.  I made up this pattern so tha...