Well its early May and spring is definitely here, the garden is green and the birds are singing, even that unfamiliar character that is the sun has been making an occasional appearance. Yes it's the time of year that gets everyone excited about the garden and being outdoors and especially kids. So that explains my next request from a local nursery, some outdoor flower shaped mirrors and a pair of outdoor blackboards.
Other than the instruction for them to be pastel colours and a certain size so that the could fit on the two gates and under a window it was pretty much left up to me. Oh yes the blackboards were to be in a duck theme and a floral theme.
The mirrors first, I chose to use two different flower shapes fairly simple cut out of far eastern exterior ply, jigsaw cut to shape and with a bit of routed detail between the petals and a rounded edge. I cut a nice dinner plate sized hole in the centre for the mirror and rebated the back a slightly larger circle for the mirror to sit in. They were then given two coats of under coat and painted in exterior gloss which has a really nice sheen to it. The mirror itself I decided would be best to make out of mirror finished stainless steel which I hoped to cut with a jigsaw in circular shapes. After purchasing a £10 pack of top quality blades and burning them all out in second I realized the steel was much too thick so back to the drawing board. I thought this time I would try a diamond blade in an angle grinder and cut the mirrors in an octagonal shape. Ten minutes later the grinder had failed to even make a mark. So back to the engineer shop and they cut the piece of stainless into four squares for me with their guillotine, only cost me £5 too, why didnt I think of that in the first place? After siliconing the mirrors in place and fitting a keyhole shaped bracket onto the back so the mirrors wouldn't be able to fall off the wall they were complete.
The black boards next, I painted two large rectangular pieces of exterior ply with blackboard paint, I gave them two coats and sanded it between each to get a nice flat finish. I then drew some cute little duckling characters and a mardy mother duck, cut these shapes out so they could be stuck onto the board and painted these in exterior gloss, I also routed some reeds into the board itself and painted the same. The chalk tray was then made from 3 x 2 pse with two drainage channels routed into it to allow the water to run out and to hold the chalks in place, this was slightly angled so any rain water could drain away and then painted blue. The other one was the same principle but with flowers the same as the mirrors on it and a nice pretty butterfly. These were screwed from the back onto the two nursery gates. All the kids were fascinated when I went to fit them especially my daughter who also goes to the nursery, although as she had already seen them in the workshop she thought they were hers and didnt seem to keen to share.
