Radio Silence...

Having 0 followers at the moment means I doubt very much you'd noticed my radio silence, but I wanted to apologise anyway...

After a good start, it all got a little too much. Starting a blog probably wasn't the best idea in the middle of exam season, which for me is always crazy, late night revision and constant marking of mock questions doesn't leave much time for me. On top of that, we've done something VERY exciting, we've only gone and bought ourselves a new house!!!

So that pretty much sums up where I've been, I almost applied for a promotion at work too, but realised I'm no kind of superwoman and would have crumbled pretty much right away... Baby steps right?

As expected when one buys a new house, I've gone Pinterest crazy, but shhhh.... I'm keeping it under wraps for now. 

Happy Fathers Day - Reclaimed Beer Carrier

Happy Father's Day to all those Daddy's out there! 

It's the second time we've celebrated Fathers day in our home, last year was a bit of a fail on my part however. I'd not long returned to full time work, juggling that and a 7 month old was hard going, a bottle of beer and the Peppa Pig book 'My Daddy' was about all I could manage. So this year I had to make up for it! 

So I thought it was about time for a little DIY, this one however, is definitely not for kids. 

If there's one thing my husband appreciates, its good beer, so I decided to get him some nice beers and thought I'd laser him a little slot together beer carrier using the laser cutter, this would also allow me to personalise a nice little message for him. 

That was until I came across this great little tutorial for Wedding Beer Totes on The New Hobbyist Blog, I was totally smitten with the idea of the tote with a bottle opener on the end so began to look for some salvageable pieces of wood to use at work. 

After a good rummage I found a beautiful piece of beech that had been removed from one of the school workbenches, it was great, covered with small drill holes and lots of paint and glue splats from over the years. Sold. I hadn't yet fully decided about the handle but had a lovely old ruler to use for the side panels, we've no need for inches anymore, with these, I was almost ready to go. 

I also loved that the ruler was from Birmingham, it's our city, or at least the closest to us, and where my husband was born.

I also searched for a wall mounted bottle opener on eBay, there was lots of choice but I just opted for cheap, cheerful and quick delivery. 

The next job was to find something for the handle, I had considered an old broom handle, but wasn't sure about how well it would hold up, fortunately we had lots of old metal tube I was able to use, so using a hacksaw I chopped it to size. I considered just bashing the handle to deform it, this would work but I wasn't sure how I'd get it into both ends of the carrier, so my colleague and I came up with a nifty technique (sorry I don't know the proper name for this technique, I'm out of my comfort zone!) but we sawed a small section from the centre of the tube on each end and hammered in a small piece of thin ply, this secured it nicely and added to the overall industrial appearance.

You may have noticed I decided against the sections to separate the bottles, I may come back to this and create some removable sections, but of now I decided to leave it as beer bottles come in so many different shapes and sizes and also, this way there was room for snacks! 

Only thing left was to fill it with some tasty beers and some suitable snacks, beef jerky and peanuts, I also got him some pork scratchings too but couldn't quite squeeze them in. 

Hope you all like my efforts, I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out and thank you to The New Hobbyist for such a fab tutorial, I bet his groomsmen loved them as much as my husband! I'm just sorry I didn't take more photos! 

Thanks for stopping by, 

Charlotte