Featured Guest: Grey Luster Girl

Hello! It is great to be here on She Wears Flowers!  Let me introduce myself...

My name is Lisa and I am the craziness behind the blog grey luster girl.  I like to sew, plan parties, cook, craft... I love it all!  One of my favorite things to do is to try my hand at new things.  Today I wanted to share with you a new thing that I tried. So here it is. My tutorial on:

How To Make Your Own Abacus

What in the world is an abacus you say? It is basically an old school calculator.  I had to watch a video on YouTube to see how it worked, but no matter.  We won't really be using it for calculating.  So what can you use it for?  Decorating for one.  Check out this oversized abacus from Potterybarn:

Source

Or if your house is anything like mine, the decorations double as play toys.

So let's get started!

First, gather your supplies. 

I saw these wooden wheels at Hobby Lobby and they just looked perfect. Plus they were 50% off which is also perfect.  If you wanted your abacus to be bigger, then bigger wheels would look great as well. My wheels were 3/4'' by 3/16. I  bought 3 bags which game me a total of 48 wheels. I happened to have some skewers on hand that were just the right size to go through the holes.  Lastly you need the wood for your frame.  I bought mine at Lowes for $1.68. It says it is two inches wide but it was more like 1.5 inches wide.  

First I spray painted my wheels.  I used Rustoleum Oil Rubbed Bronze Spray Paint and it only took a couple of coats. 

Next step is to cut your wood.  I cut four 7 inch pieces of my wood to form the outer square and then an inner piece that was about 6.25 inches.  

Measure and mark the spots were your holes are going to be.  The interior piece of wood will have holes going all the way through. The top and bottom pieces will have holes going about half of the way through.  My holes were marked 1 inch apart.  I used 6 skewers so I made 6 holes.

Now drill. If you want to stain or paint your wood for the box, now would be a good time. Insert your skewers or dowels into the holes of the interior wood piece. 

Add your wheels. I did 2 wheels on the top and 6 wheels on the bottom.  

Now mark and drill your holes for the top and bottom.  If you are going to offset the outside box like I did, then make sure you lay the square out like you would if it was all finished and align your marks for the holes with the existing skewers.  

Using wood glue or a finishing gun, attach the side strips. I used wood glue. 

You're done! 

It was so fun being here and I hope that you will pop over to my blog grey luster girl and find some more new fun tutorials!