decoupage the house (4): EnviroTex Lite and the cigar box
Cigar boxes, how I do love thee.
Seriously. Just plain old empty wood cigar boxes. The woods, the labels, the fragrance, the sheer nifty goodness of packaging–the fact that there’s something left over after the contents are gone that’s worth having in itself. I could build a shrine to them. Of them. I certainly have enough of them lying around here.
I like them plain, but I give them away decoupaged on top, lined with fabric. I’m loving them even more this year now that I’ve got some decent Envirotex results. It took me a while because I couldn’t find any very detailed description of how it’s done, so here’s one from me. I suggest trying the tray first for reasons described in that post. I’ll be describing top-only Envirotex application.
None of this is hard, but there are critical steps; you cannot get a good result without them.
First, give yourself enough time. When I’m working on a cigar box, I may use wood filler, a finish restorer, gesso, paint, glue, varnish, wax, and Envirotex resin. Each of these has a different cure time. You have to honor cure times. Just because you really need your project to be finished tomorrow isn’t going to speed up the chemical reactions taking place. Mix uncured media and you’re going to get nasty effects.
Prepare the outside of your box as you see fit. I remove labels but generally leave the sides and bottom as they are, and then usually paint the top and apply paper with glue. I most often use Minwax Polycrylic on the bottom and sides of the box, and then seal over the decoupaged top with Polycrylic or Liquitex varnish, two coats minimum.
So…it’s cured, right? If your finish says “allow 3 hours for light handling and 24 hours for normal use,” you’re going to allow 24 hours, right? Because you do not want Envirotex sitting on top there chewing through your sealer.
You do not want globs of Envirotex all over the sides of your box either, so coat the sides with paste wax. I use the Johnson’s stuff in a can. Totally coat the sides all the way up to the top edges but do not go over the top, not a speck. Envirotex will not stick to the waxed areas even if it hardens there. Do not buff it up like you would if it were furniture; just leave it to dry. Then apply masking tape to the box-top lip to keep the resin from running in there and sealing your box shut. Cover the latch and hinges too.
the wax will keep the tape from hurting your finish
Now prepare your workspace for pouring Envirotex. You will need to protect your surface–wax paper is good for this. You will need to elevate the box so that if you get drips they will drip off the bottom rather than settling in to glue your box to your table. Set your box up as a dry run and make sure the top of it is level, really as truly level as you can possibly attain. Then find something to be a dust cover while the Envirotex cures for the first eight hours. I use a bowl or plastic bin or whatever can be made dust-free and will fit over without touching the box. Get all of this done before you pour.
Read the Envirotex instructions. Have a couple of craft stick stirrers handy. Estimate, measure, mix as described in the tray project. But this time, let the mixed resin sit there in the mixing cup for 10 minutes before pouring.
Now, pour, starting with a thin stream in the center and going around and around in roughly the shape of the box top. You will be using less resin than you might for a tray, because you don’t want it all to slop over the edges right away, but it’s still a good thick layer, full of bubbles. 
Stop about an inch away from the edge. Let it sit 5 minutes. Ideally, it will not be reaching the edge after 5 minutes, but if it’s close, push it back with the craft stick. You don’t want it there yet.
Now work on the bubbles as described in the tray project–except you should not pick up or tilt the box. Have a good light handy and move around to catch the surface at different angles, so you can see bubbles or dust. Keep pushing the resin back from the edges if you need to. Take your time on the bubbles; no need to hyperventilate. Keep shaking the straw!
Somewhere around 15 minutes after the actual pour, take your craft stick and drag the resin to each edge. You don’t have to worry about making it level and you don’t want to push a bunch over the edge. All you need to do is lead the resin neatly to the brim; it will flow and level itself, and surface tension will hold it there. I bring the stick right up to the edge of the box-top and kind of saw it back and forth there to make an even edge on the resin.
naturally I have to make the occasional chicken box
go all the way out to the very edge
If it’s really uncontrollable and dripping all over, then you’ve got too much poured on; use less next time.
Work on the bubbles some more. At 25 to 30 minutes after pouring, you should be done. Call it good enough, put the dust cover over, and walk away. And now the hardest part–don’t peek for eight hours!
Once it’s dust-proof, you can uncover it. Let it sit flat for a couple more days to fully cure (72 hours). In the meantime you can remove the tape, and any drips should pop right off your waxed surfaces. If there’s a little ridge left behind after you break off a drip, you can sand it and then polish the edge off with fine steel wool, but wait until the resin is fully hardened.
Last but not least, give it a new coat of wax on all non-resined surfaces. Buff it up. Admire!
tomato update
We have fruit!
san marzano
sweeties
The whole upside-down gimmick seems, so far, just a gimmick. The two San Marzano plants are fairly equivalent, though the upside-down one looks silly:
…while the upside-down Sweetie has never caught up to the right-side-up one:
We’ve had quite a lot of blossom-drop from the Sweeties and all the plants are showing some yellowing leaves already.
The only advantage I can see so far to the upside-down plants is the watering: the bottom of the bucket stays moist longer than the top, which might keep the upside-down ones hydrated better in the heat. But I’m afraid in the real heat we’d just end up with buckets of boiled tomato roots. Yum.
blog action day 2008
Grass roots: one of my favorite of all idioms.
Today, Blog Action Day 2008. Topic this year: Poverty.
When I heard the topic a month or two ago, I thought, how easy. I’ll just talk about my two current favorite charitable organizations. Both address poverty, and more, both address individual faces and needs. And human dignity.
The first one, Kiva.org, as it turns out, has been adopted as an officially-suggested response to Blog Action Day by the BAD team. So not so much publicity needed there, perhaps. Microlending. Give it a whirl.
The second one I can wholeheartedly endorse as I’ve seen them in action. Poco a Poquito was founded by a remarkable woman, Aida Barbosa, who grew up on the Mexico/Texas border and for over 40 years has been collecting donations and volunteers to provide basic needs to people in border towns. My church got involved, and even the city of San Marcos has provided a venue for a yearly benefit concert. I believe this is principally through the effort of Joel Schwartz, a gifted musician and member of First Lutheran.
To hear either Joel or Aida Barbosa speak about their work is to hear undiluted passion: a gift to us, the cynical, the emotionally fatigued [okay, that's me I'm describing]. Ten times a year or more, Poco a Poquito takes a load of donated clothing and food and other necessities to communities of people living virtually in dumps, scavenging through garbage to keep body and soul together.
I wanted to link to their website here, but I am thwarted by lack of any such thing. There’s one in the works. In the meantime, donations can be sent to:
POCO-A-POQUITO INC
187 Encino Loma
Killeen Tx 76542
Writing even these few paragraphs has me thinking about the quality of my (self-absorbed, privileged) lifestyle. I have lame arms, I can’t eat normal food, I’m terminally shy: I’m not built for rescue missions and hard physical labor at this point. I know I could overcome those limits with some work. But before I even get to that, there are so many things I am truly good at that can help just as much, somewhere. I can write. I can sing. I can sew and craft. I am financially sound even in this day and I can loan and give money. And enjoy it all.
I’m looking out for ways to make these personal amusements count against poverty. A little Blog Action is a dangerous thing.
the duplicity of hens
Milo has never, to my knowledge, crawled underneath our deck. Until yesterday.
We have a floating deck off the back patio. It’s low, only one to two feet off the ground most of the way. Nobody much hangs out under there except the chickens and the occasional toad. Mojo doesn’t fit and even Milo, the smaller dog, would have to scrape along under there on his belly. I crawled under as far as I could, which wasn’t very, a while back when we were trying to figure out where all the chicken eggs were going, but reached no conclusion. Lately I’ve been gathering three or four eggs a day from the straw bale nest so we figured we were getting them all.
However. Yesterday Milo was in the backyard, and then disappeared. I called him, and, being the very very good dog he is when he isn’t being horrid, he came crawling out from under the deck, chewing madly. With a large quantity of egg yolk just dripping down his chin. He had to have grabbed up least two eggs before reversing position and snaking his way out of there. Proof positive, finally.
This caused me some concern, since I have no idea how many eggs might have been under there, or how old they were. But he seems to have come through without harm. We’re greedy for eggs ourselves, so this morning T. stapled a chicken-wire skirt around the deck. The hens looked mildly put out but they get over themselves faster than any human alive.
I spent the morning setting up my baby glass studio, out on the patio. The two cherry tomato plants are showing their first open blossoms. All’s right with the world here, as long as we don’t listen to the news–
