How To Make And Sell Junk/Glass Yard Art

How To Make And Sell Junk/Glass Yard Art

I personally struggle from Adult ADD, OCD and depression. It has been a rough go at times for me and throughout the 33 years of life I have lived, I am slowly figuring out little tricks here and there on how to keep all my friends (ADD, OCD and depression) happy and content and at bay (so to speak).

What I have discovered to work better than anything else (including my medicines... Which I definitely still take them as well; so by no means am I saying ditch the meds... Ever. Nope, definitely not saying that here), is using ALL of my creativity in every single aspect and way that I can come up with! I am a very creative person, I love to talk, I love to write, I love to help people, I love making/creating/building things and so I put all of that together for you right here in my "How To Make And Sell Junk & Glass Yard Art". This will be my first of MANY "How To's" on building things, creating things, making things, doing things, etc. If there are specific things you want to know how to do, drop me a line, comment, message, etc. Or even follow me on Facebook through my shop @TSHomeGoods or swing by my shops website at https://www.tshomegoods.net and let me know what kind of "How To" you want to see added here next!

For the meantime though, lets talk about Junk/Glass yard art. What is that first of all? The junk could be anything from metal bolts and nuts you have in the back of your garage from a million moons ago to a broken old window you put out in the trash yesterday after your kid through a ball through it (it was one of those old wooden, single glass pane windows anyways, so who needs that, right? Wrong!!!!! YOU need that junk! For these very "How To" stories to make that thing into money for you!

So, before we get too far, if you have ADD like I then at this point you are wanting a list to go around and find all the "junk" things that are going to make you money... Well calm down for a second; you can make a list now if you'd like, if that will fill that gap and make your little heart content, you go ahead and start that list of things popping out of your head in every direction right now that is labeled "junk" and just sitting around doing nothing that you don't feel you need to keep. The rest of us, carry on, keep moving forward here with me and let's keep diving deeper.

For the Glass aspect, this is even easier! If you have old GLASS (this all MUST be glass to qualify as "Glasss Yard Art" here) mugs, plates, bowls, dishes, lids to dishes that you don't have the dish for anymore, dishes that you don't have the lid to anymore, glasses, vases, random little ramekins, shot glasses, fruit trays, jars, bottles... The list goes on and on here. Literally, ANYTHING that is glass that you can look at and it instantly makes you think "This would make the perfect...." (which we will get to how that works in just a second). Gather all your glass things and get them all together somewhere; I like to use the floor personally so that if I dump one over or bump one or anything I haven't knocked it off the counter onto the floor to its doom, or off the table or anything like that. It's safe on the floor; plus lets be honest here, we all know my OCD went to town on this collecting glass business and I have no an entire room full of every bit of glass type thing from every room in my house, my basement, my little shed building that is in my backyard that came with the house full of the previous owners junk, my garage, my neighbors house, the yard, the neighbors yard, my dumpster, etc. lol. Yea, I have PLENTY of glass to work with at this point.

If you ran out like a ninja earlier and collected all your "junk" you can put it in separate pile or neatly stack it, style it, however you want to do it so that you can sit there and look one way at your sea of glass and the other side of you is your sea of junk. The junk can literally be anything as well! However creative you want to be is the magic here because the sky is the limit! If you saw a metal stake in your yard and didn't know where it came from, that thin will probably have a home by the end of this! The junk can also be an old shelf you don't use anymore, a metal wall art thing on your wall that doesn't really fit in any more, it can be something that you wanted to downsize and maybe have a garage sale or something one day and sell it, you can probably use it here now! Remember that box fan you had last summer and it crapped out on you so you threw it down in the basement to deal with later? Yea, that thing is perfect for the junk pile now!

So you have your seas of "things", we won't call them junk at the moment, because they now fall into the "Options" category. They COULD very well be turned into something absolutely wonderful at this point and no longer be "junk"!

For my first project I ever did, I use a small clear glass dish (I think it was a fruit tray at some point of some kind... maybe grapes from the look of it), I had 2 old forks that didn't match any silverware we had OR each other, I found 4 ramekins in different sizes and colors, a miniature cast iron (looks like a regular iron to an ironing board but cast iron and small... like 3") and my friend had her junk pile and I snagged a little gold crown thing that actually was a piece to a lamp from a million years ago and the lamp was taken apart and all of its pieces were sitting in a pile; when I looked at the pile my brain instantly looked at that little gold ring piece and saw a crown! So I ran with it!

It's all going to start when you are looking at your "options" and as soon as you look at one thing and think "that looks like a...." (whatever comes to mind at this point)... THAT is where you begin! For me, I grabbed the weird grape dish and had it sitting in front of me; with my ADD I have a million things coming at me for every piece in the sea... We can't have that so I have to drown out the noise and just grab one random thing and that is my start. From there I look at the sea and the next thing I grab was 2 of the ramekins because I just instantly saw an owl with those. Then the iron because that is DEFINITELY a beak for this guy, then 2 more ramekins to make a smaller circle for the eyes so they look more lifelike, "Hmmm, legs, legs, legs, what can I use for legs?... Silverware!!! I have tons of silverware over here in this pile!!!!" And it just sort of began to shape into this owl. Sometimes I would grab a dish or bowl or some piece of something and change my mind on it, or look back out into the sea and see a piece of something else that would make a better version of this or that on my project I am working on. But no matter what... DO NOT LET THE ADD WIN HERE!!! Let the OCD win if anything, if you start an owl, YOU FINISH AN OWL! Otherwise, you won't finish anything and you'll have 14 half built critters, animals, houses, etc. sitting around you and nothing finished. Trust me I know this, just save yourself a lot of time right now, stick to the first thing you thought of and follow it through!

Once I started setting down all the pieces as I grabbed them and shaping this adorable little owl, I was falling more and more in love with it by the "Option"... Pretty soon I have a full owl and I am looking for something for the inside of the eyes as a last piece to finish them....

NOTE: Don't ever go buy anything to add to your "Options", if you want to make money off the things you have just sitting around, then you have to use what is just sitting around. It doesn't do you any good (or anyone else living with you) to go out and buy some cute buttons for those eyes, or whatever you think you need to finish this thing. Look in your sea of options, if you don't like anything in your options, go walk through the house again, garage again, basement again, etc. and I am confident you will find something that will work perfectly for that finishing touch you need.

I used 2 river rocks for the insides of the eyes; to finish them off.

Side Note: To attach all of these options together to make 1 single thing... I tried many different glues and the one that worked best for me was E6000. Yes you can go buy E6000 to hook all of these pieces together if you don't already have some in the junk drawer. I wanted to use hot glue, but what happens to hot glue when it gets warm (from the sun that is shining in your yard all the time on this new yard art)? It gets mushy and melts and before you know it, your owls eyes are sliming down its cute little face until finally it just falls right off and you have to start all over.

When I was looking at my adorable little owl laying there on the floor in front of me, I had this feeling of absolute PRIDE over anything else. This was all just "Crap" to me, just stuff, sitting around, collecting dust, I didn't EVER use this stuff and here I was, making it into something else and fell in love with it all over again! I took 11 pieces of "junk" from around my mess (as I like to call it when its just stuff sitting around) and turned it in to ONE adorable owl.

Now it is at this point, you might have to start a fight with yourself here... Maybe fight the depression or push away the OCD or tell the ADD to kick rocks for a bit... Now you have to decide if you can actually get rid of this absolutely adorable owl you just made out of your junk. Can I?...

Absolutely NOT!!!! I had to keep this little booger! See, what I did was, I put a REALLY high price tag on it, put it in my little shop and..... weird... Nobody wanted to buy it! But EVERYBODY that came in would tell me how adorable it was!

So I decided it was time for another project from my junk! Now that I finished that owl, Plus people were telling me how cute it was; I had this new found confidence with building my yard masterpieces!

Step 1: I quickly grabbed a big ugly colored old plate that had probably come from a garage sale at some point or something, flipped it back and forth a few times to decide which way I wanted it to lay on the floor. This dish was an awful white and green and red splotchy, dotty, almost Christmas themed color, yet had this weird almost flower shape to it already. So I was going to build a flower from here!

Step 2: I pan the sea of things in the hunt for "Flower" looking plates, dishes and bowls... With no idea of how big I wanted to go with it yet or anything, I just start swimming through the sea with my eyes and grabbed a few pieces.

Step 3: Take all the pieces you have and arrange them (however many times it takes to be right... And by right I mean, when you look at it you just know THAT is where that piece belongs.. Then its good and you can move on to the next piece. Sometimes this can take a bit too, sometimes I end up with every single piece switched out, mulitple times, before I see "Perfect").

Step 4: Once you have all your pieces and you have put them in their perfect spots and formed your perfect yard art piece... E6000 that stuff before you change your mind! E6000 will have to sit over night more than likely to be good and stuck to where you trust it to hold itself up without breaking anything.

For me on this one, once I got the whole thing put together, I held on to it for a couple days, showing customers here and there and then it hit me... I needed just something on the back to hold this thing up or to be able to hang it on the side of a house maybe, or fence or something. So back to the sea I go, I found a little miniature looking vase thing, flipped it upside down and glued it to the back of the big plate... THIS is perfect for a piece of rebar or a yard stake or metal stake or stick thing I am sure I have somewhere to slide right in there and hold this flower up!

I took this flower to my first booth that I did in a tiny little town nearby. THIS flower sold for $55 and the husband and wife that bought it were SO incredibly happy they found it, didn't have a bad thing to say about it and absolutely could not go home without it! It made me feel so happy, because they were so happy with it. I told them how I made it, showed them the little vase in the back and told them that was for a piece of rebar maybe or a yard stake, (or maybe they have their own idea to add to it) and they were ecstatic! This Junk/Glass Yard Art Flower was only 5 pieces, took me what felt like 5 seconds to piece it together because the pieces were just perfectly popping into place and sold at my first event I took it to!

It's such an amazing feeling when you see the persons face light up so much like my customers faces did! It was SUCH a good feeling! I could sell my owl to ANYBODY if they were that happy with it. It makes it so much easier to let go of your "junk" when someone else is so happy with it.

So give it a try! Let me know how it goes! Send me pictures, send me messages with how you came up with your Junk/Glass Yard Art Creation! I can't wait to see them!