Showing posts with label projects. Show all posts
Showing posts with label projects. Show all posts

Saturday, September 22, 2012

How to clean wax off your surfboard

I spent the majority of my Saturday dreaming about making a Hawaiian dress for our departure to Oahu's north shore next Friday...while cleaning my surfboard. It was too nice outside to spend the whole day in my basement, so I didn't.
Two major factors influenced my decision to clean the wax off my surfboard. Permanently. Firstly, the closest beach is a two hour drive to the Oregon/Washington coastline. Cold water, sharks, really craggy rocks. Secondly, my nagging shoulder injury tells me that maybe my (regular) surfing days are over. Sad, but true.

So, let's get started!

What you'll need:
Board
Plastic scraper (I borrowed mine from my husband's kitchen aid mixer. Thanks love!)
Flour
Patience















1. Let your board sit out in the sun for a while. The high was 72 today, however somehow it felt warmer than that in the direct sun. The warmer it is, the easier the wax comes off, so do this on a hot day if you can. If you don't have sun, try the low setting on your blow dryer.

2. Take some household flour and rub it on the area where you want to remove the wax. It should look like this. The flour bonds with the wax and then it will fall away more easily. It also helps you see exactly where the wax is on your board.


3. I like to scrape about a one foot section first, to get off the majority of the wax.

4. Then put some more flour over the remaining area and either rub with your fingers or you can scrape gently.


5. As a last step, I wiped off all of the flour with a dry cloth, then cleaned the whole thing with Windex. 



6. Done! A nice clean board. It took probably about two hours to clean the whole thing.
My board is going into my newly remodeled sewing room. The hubby and I honeymooned in Kauai so I've remodeled the room with a tropical theme - Kauai sand colored walls, vintage travel posters, old survey maps of Kauai. Some day I'll get around to posting about that...

Some stats on my board, in case you are interested:
Hawaiian Pro Designs - Surf board by Donald Takayama
9' 1/2"
22" wide
2 7/8" thick
Signed by Cori Schumaker, three-time Women’s World Longboard Champion (2000, 2001, 2010), Women’s Longboard Pipeline Pro Champion (2009) and two-time ASP North American Champion (2008, 2009)

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

a basket full of sunshine


A couple of my dearest friends are going through some pretty rough times right now. When I saw this pin on pinterest I was inspired to create a couple of baskets to send to them. (Link to original idea)

Here's a sampling of what you can put in them. Have fun shopping around, it's easy to fill them up; and not everything has to be yellow.

confetti cake mix
frosting
sprinkles
cupcake gems
cupcake baking cups
yellow butterfly cookie cutter

Trefoils Girl Scout cookies
Peeps
Lindt chocolates
milk chocolate raisins
candy coated sunflower seeds
banana chips
Myntz!
lemonheads
Piroulines
mixed teas in yellow hues

yellow dinner plate dahlia
yellow gladiolus
Little Miss Sunshine DVD
Milk Protein & Honey Softsoap
vanilla jar candle
yellow star post-it notes
lemon verbena soap
bath sponge
bath pouf
hand lotion
gold glitter nail polish

Arrange your items on a bed of shredded yellow paper and yellow cellophane easter grass and you're done!

For the cards I wrote the message in Pages and printed onto cardstock. I placed a blob of glue from a liquid glue tube on the paper and covered it with yellow glitter. A note on the glue: I tried a glue stick first, but liquid glue gave me a more defined circular blob that looks more like a sun.



Voila. A burst of sunshine for your dearest friends. :)