What to do with those scraps

I have a lot of scraps.  You know, the cut ends of wood that you end up kicking around the floor.  Mine were piling up and they made me kind of sad.

Heck, I sell under the name, The Reclaimed Life, so I had to give them another purpose.

I took some random discarded pieces of pallet wood to make this lovely doggie:

I used some old weathered scraps to make this fun fishy:

I love this moose and I'm keeping him all to myself:

Kind of seeing a theme here?!?  Well, I do live in New Hampshire where we love our dogs, fish and moose.  And it wouldn't be New Hampshire without a bear or two:

I used much smaller scraps to make these bears.

You can make your own "scrap animal" too.  I stayed with my New England theme, but you can choose any animal, or object, you like.  Stay with a silhouette you would find easy to cut with a jigsaw.

I used my Silhouette Cameo program, but you can just put the outline of your object in photo editing software or a word processing document, enlarge to the size you want, print out the multiple "puzzle" sheets and tape it together.

After you have cut around your template, trace it onto 1/4" plywood wood, then cut out your object with a jigsaw.

Of course, I forgot to take more "during" photos.  But the rest is really easy.  Here's what you need to remember:  after you adhere your wood scraps, you will cut around your template again.  So you want to go past the edges when you glue the scraps to the 1/4" plywood.  Now just lay your small scraps across the wood, going over the edge of your cutout.  I like to vary the color and length.  Adhere the pieces with wood glue as you go along.  When I finished gluing all my pieces, you couldn't even tell it was a bear -- it just looked like a mess of wood.

After the glue dried, I flipped the bear over and put 1/2" staples in the back to make sure the wood scraps weren't going anywhere.  I kept the bear on it's back and cut around the wood template again.  This "shaved" off the ends of the scraps that were overhanging.  And that's it!  Just add a hanger and you're good to go.

I feel pretty good about saving some wood with character and making something new out of what was heading to the burn pile.

The bears will be making their way to Robin's Egg next week.  :)

Do good, save wood.  (**I made myself giggle**)

Have a great day,

Debbie

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