Trying DIY Crafts from the 1800's... Tramp Art & Popsicle Stick Lamps

today's video is sponsored by Simply Safe there's no safe like Simply Safe hello everyone and welcome back to Lone Fox today we are taking a step into the past and we are going to be diying like it is the 1870s The Hobby and Craft that I'm actually referring to is known as art which might be kind of a funny word to some people I don't know if you've heard it I don't know if you have not heard it but I want to give you guys a little bit of a rundown on what art is because I have been a huge collector myself I genuinely find so much joy in these little art pieces that I have these are just like traditional art boxes that I have but let me give you a rundown on kind of the history of art and what we are going to be working on today the exact Origins and history of art are actually a bit unclear but here's what we do know art is a unique style of folkart woodworking made from affordable found objects like cigar boxes or shipping crates artists typically used basic tools such as pocket knives to carve layer geometric designs connecting them together with glue or Nails wood and cigar boxes came to prominence in the 1850s and as people started to repurpose them trar as we know it today was born while it dates all the way back to the late 1800s it was a prevalent thing during the Great Depression and most commonly seen in the United States art is often thought to be solely made by transient people formerly known as hobos or tramps but in reality the resourcefulness of this craft became a little bit more widespread and Factory workers farmers and laborers and other occupations could also be seen creating art like a lot of folk art art is anonymous work and the artists are not known today the most common form are the box in the frame which I do also feel like are widely becoming more popular in the realm of interior design but each artist had their own Creative Vision and they were able to create every conceivable shape and size including furniture and objects of Whimsy so it was a total free-for-all when it came to art today the term art is often used to describe items made of cigar boxes but also folk art items made of match sticks Popsicle sticks spools bottle caps clothes pins and any other common everyday object I also love that a lot of these pieces utilize things that you would traditionally probably throw away um art consist of things such as bottle caps match sticks um cigar boxes just things that you would discard but back during the Great Depression and times where money was more scarce it was a hobby to kind of use items that you would throw away and make them into usable pieces something I will say is art boxes like these are costly I'm going to pop up a range of just what I Googled for art box and art frame on the screen for you guys and that is the reason I wanted to bring you a DIY video today I kind of feel like over the past year I've been seeing art in more of my favorite designers projects and I feel like people or the everyday person would like to have maybe a piece or recreate a piece of bar and that is what we are going to be doing today I'm going to be taking you through three art projects where am I also I didn't even mention where I'm at this is actually like my junk room this is where I shoot my products from my website we actually have a ton of vintage over here this is going to be for the Vintage drop that's happening on the 3D so make sure to save the date you guys our next vintage drop on Lone fox.com is going to be on the 3rd of November at 10:00 a.m. a.m. and I'll give you another reminder in my next video this is just like a little sampling like some of what's around me of what's to come I'm really excited about this I haven't been more excited about a DIY video in in a long time honestly like I love art and I want to see how it's made how it's created but I have not been collecting the items I need I don't have a lot of match stick I don't have a ton of popsicle sticks so we are going to head out to the craft store I'm going to get some of the supplies that I need and then we can head back here and get to crafting today's video is sponsored bu a Simply Safe which I love my Simply Safe I am using this almost every single day I'm touching this little pad here because this is actually my home security system and whenever I leave I arm it because I want everything to stay in my house stay in here of course like it needs to stay inside no one else can take it me peace of mind I'm able to check the cameras and everything so we are going to arm up the security system click away and we're out the door I've been using my Simply Safe home security system for about 4 years now I actually had one in my previous apartment and when I moved into my own home I knew I was going to be setting up a fullon home security system and Simply Safe was the option that I opted for because it is the easiest no-brainer solution for setting up home security it shipped directly to your door and I was able to set up my entire system in under an hour and I did this a little over 2 years ago but a recent addition that I added which is actually an outdoor camera because Simply Safe now offers their new active guard outdoor protection old school systems trigger once somebody's broken in giving them time to still grab stuff with simply safes active guard protection monitoring aent agents actually react in real time to suspicious individuals approaching your home that way they're able to speak to them trigger alarms or even request urgent police dispatch if need it but something cool is that simply safes AI Tech actually identifies familiar faces and alerts agents to threats this means that trusted visitors like your family neighbors or dog walker are not going to be triggered as false alarms the outdoor camera was extremely easy to set up and I love how this is just super functional I'm able to just check it from my phone which makes it convenient from anywhere around the world having this extra layer of protection definitely going into the holiday season if is especially a great time to add a home security system because people know you're going to have gifts for the holiday time and that's when break-ins actually most commonly occur so I too want you guys to stay safe this season so save 50% on your Simply Safe security system when you sign up for a core monitoring plan and get your first month free just visit simplysafe docomo to customize yours there's no safe like simplysafe all righty so this is where we're going to find something to use as our box base ooh this could be cute simple and small all righty I'm going to grab one of these ooh we love to see it 30% off unfinished wood all right so for the art boxes I kind of want to get something like this these actually look really nice it's a strip bag but I can't tell if they're different sizes in there it kind of does look like different sizes of wood and then for building on top I'm going to grab these wood dowels which are a quarter in uh squared like a square qu inch dowel and they're 12 in long and I think I'm going to grab two packs of these so we have enough to work with the last thing I'm going to grab is popsicle sticks which these are only $7.99 for 1,000 popsicle sticks so not too bad plus the 30% off but not least I'm going to grab this tacky glue which is fast grab there is $799 with 320 off are you kidding the first project I would like to dive on into is creating our very own popsicle stick lamp now this one is actually a vintage lamp so is the one back here that you you can see back there I don't know if it's going to be to that Grandeur but I'll try my best this is another one that I have I just love popsicle stick lamps I think they are so gorgeous I feel like they're definitely hit or miss for some people like some people think that they just look cheap and it's not their Vibe I think these are so cool and we are going to attempt to make our very own popsicle stick lamp and if we do so this lamp's going to cost us like around $9 in total which is absolutely crazy for all the supplies so let's get started so the first thing I wanted to do was look up some design ideas and I just went on Pinterest and then I actually came across this one from one of my favorite designers Pearson Ward they're offering this one on their website right now for sale so I'll link it if you're curious but I got my popsicle sticks and this is the tacky glue I'm going to be using it's actually like a strong bond Ultra fast drying grip tacky glue and I had to go through all my popsicle sticks and actually pick out the flattest ones you're going to want to go through because some of them are crooked some of them are skewed a little bit so I went through picked the flattest ones and I'm starting off by creating a a literal Square so just how you would build a log cabin is the same way you build a popsicle stick lamp and I'm saying this as if you're supposed to know how to build a log cabin but it's very simple I promise you're just going to start with two sticks in the same direction kind of running parallel and then you're going to add the two other sticks on top gluing them together and you're going to build on top of this until you reach your desired height so I kind of realized that if I added the glue to a bunch of sticks at once and then let it get a little bit tackier I was able to then go and apply a bunch of them at once and it made the process quite a bit easier and I feel like this is pretty self-explanatory as to what I'm doing here so I hope this is making sense so far I just went ahead and built this up probably twice the size to what you see here and then we are going to actually start kind of bringing the sticks in just a bit you can actually see me start doing it here I just bring the sticks in ever so slightly each time I add a new stick I'm just popping it in about an eighth of an inch in on itself that way the sticks start tapering inwards and you're going to do this both directions so each time you add the two sticks in the same direction just kind of bring them and nudge them in the tiniest little bit the glue makes it nice cuz you can kind of Glide them around very slightly and then let it just sit in place for about 30 seconds before moving on to your next one and as you can see here it's starting to taper up and kind of create just a nice little shape here and I love how we're not having to cut any popsicle sticks because a lot of times with these lamps you have to go in and cut popsicle sticks or make alterations but I wanted to do one that was quite easy for us to recreate so this is what the base is looking like and now we got to work on the shade for our shade I'm going to be creating a octagon shape with the popsicle sticks and then we're going to build on top of that so it's kind of like in sections of four that you're going to be working in because you want to work in even numbers and I did eight for an octagon it's just going to make it a little bit of a wider shade but you can also do a hexagon if you wanted to and just like for the base we're going to start tapering this in once you reach the height you desire and this is kind of going to create that mushroom esque shape to your lamp and I'm just tapering them in here bringing them in just about an eighth of an inch each time I add a new popsicle stick and then there's going to be a point that you reach actually where it creates a perfect square on top with all of your sticks and once I reached that I was like okay this is great I can go ahead and just glue across both these sticks and then create a flat little surface on the top and I'll be able to just drill right through that and use this as my lampshade but I did realize at this point that my lamp shade was far too short so once this all glued and adhered I did go ahead and flip it over and build about another 3 in of height to the opposite side which is great that I can just add right on to it and that was something I found out because the cord kit that I ordered actually came with a harp that was just taller than I had expected so I needed the lamp shade just to be a bit taller but once I had it all glued together I did find the center of my lamp shade so that I was able to just drill a hole down the center and we were able to pop this on the top of the harp once we put the lamp together I also did the same thing on the base I actually ended up gluing across two sticks just to create a nice clean surface on the top of our base drilling through that section there and then I actually you can kind of see here I picked up that silver bit I actually put it in the drill itself as it was a drill bit and drilled it and screwed it into the lamp base itself so that it was really tight and secure I actually had to have Justin helped me remove the drill itself but it was super super secure in the lamp section and then I added the harp on just screwed the little kind of socket base in and then I strung my wiring up through the unders set of the popsicle stick lamp screwed it into the electrical socket and then kind of connected this all up added my shade and that was how I finished off my popsicle stick lamp I am in love with this in love look at what we created I am so beyond happy with this lamp I wish I could plug it in on camera to show you guys I actually ended up following a design that I saw on Pearson Ward which is actually a vintage one that they're selling so if you want one similar to this um they actually have it over on their website I'll link it for you guys it's really structured too like and sturdy I'm very impressed it only took me probably from start to finish like 4 and 1 half 5 hours it really wasn't the craziest thing I've been sitting here for a while the sun is almost going down and I need to film two more projects now it's time to move on to authentic art and I want to try to recreate like a small art frame in a similar style to these now for a true piece of authentic art we are going to try to recreate one I'm going to be using this knife set that I got on Amazon I'll link it for you guys this actually made it really easy and it's similar to what Artisans used to use like a similar kind of hand placement and Tool and I'm going to go ahead and just create these diagonal Nicks into the corner edge of our quarin dowel in One Direction going all the way down about a/4 inch apart now when you go back you're going to flip it in the opposite direction you're going to notch out a little tiny triangle diamondesque chunk and you're going to do this all the way down and I know it's very tedious it's very small and you kind of think it's not going to really create an impact but it almost makes the wood look like it's studded like it has these pyramid ask shapes and this just really creates a beautiful look when you layer it together and it looks really really kind of trippy to the eye and very carved and beautiful so I actually repeated this process across about 10 of these 12in long dowels and it only took me probably 30 minutes or so with each of these I did as well I kind of felt like I got better at it so if you wanted to do a couple to just practice on and get the hang of it then you can go into the actual process of creating a whole bunch for your project but here's a close-up where you can see me just cutting backwards on some of the cuts I already created to just Notch out those little sections and this is about how deep I went on the quarter inch towel so I went only about halfway down on that diagonal Edge I know this is probably all not making sense but I hope it does in comparison to the video here's kind of what it looked like and here's what three of them looked like together I had a bunch of these little wood confetti bits which I wish I knew something to do with but I don't think I have anything to do with them but here are all of our strips with our art notching on them now I had this little piece of balsa wood that I wanted to just use as the base for my frame and a pair of miter shears is definitely going to be your best friend in this process I will link one below for you from Amazon super affordable but I actually you don't have to use one if you don't have one I just happen to have one on hand I am going to go head and just miter the outside edges you can use an xacto knife if you don't have one just cut it at a 45° angle to your best ability I also cut a inside frame or like the inset of the frame and so I glued these all down once I had them all mitered and I just did this by eye you guys there was no Rhyme or Reason to how wide I had my frame be or the thickness I just knew that I needed to be able to glue two of these dowels glued together once I stuck them together which you'll see in a second here I need needed them to be able to be glued on top of our base so I wanted there to be no gaap and you'll see exactly what I'm saying I'm gluing two of our little cut pieces together that we did and this is going to create our next layer so once those are glued and adhered together you can go ahead and miter the corners and stack this on top now the width of this covers up that initial Gap that is created in the process and I'm just going to cover up that whole first layer with our new layer and this is what's going to start creating the little pyramid shape up and then we're just going to do one on the very top and that's going to finish everything off the miter shears just make this kind of come together super easy and it's really hard to explain this process so I hope that it's kind of understandable from the video and for a final layer I actually notched out both sides of this because in our other ones we only notched one corner but in this piece or our third layer we're going to actually Notch both sides to make it look like it is just cascading from both directions so then I'm going to cut out the inset on that little balsa wood frame with an X-Acto Knife pop that out and that is basically the base of our frame I ended up staining this using some dark walnut stain and I love the way that this ended up looking with this color you guys look how good the frame turned out I could not be happier with the outcome of this I do need to go in with a little bit more stain I've only done one coat so far this one is actually from the 1800s like a 19th century art piece but I feel like this Frame emulates that design just a bit everything stacked great and it just ended up turning out really nice I'm going to pop a photo on the back side and I think I'm going to hang this up actually in my kitchen for our last project this is the one that I'm kind of most hesitant about actually it's utilizing match sticks to create like a little box and I was going to make a frame because again it's kind of easier but I want to make a box in the video I really think that first of all I can utilize a box I love little storage boxes I think we can do it so let's go ahead and dive on in and see how hard part is with match sticks I saved this project for last because I was kind of scared I didn't know how it was going to come together I didn't know how long it was going to take but it actually came together in like an hour and a half and I loved how it turned out so I laid my matches across a tile and lit them with a blowtorch in order to just get them all going at once well I did like 15 at once then I blew them out and then once they are cooled down I just nipped the top of The Little Match off so that we were left with kind of like the burnt top Edge and then this is the Box base that I ended up getting at Joanne so I removed all the hardware from it and I started off by adding some glue to the bottom section this is actually the same bottle of glue that I used for the whole popsicle stick lamp so it worked pretty well for all my projects now I went ahead and on the bottom of this box I wasn't sure what I wanted to do at first so I just kind of kept it easy on myself and used the full length of the match and figured I can cut these off after but I loved the way that the kind of jagged bottom Edge looked and it was still pretty cohesive enough or like it still made sense enough for me to leave them long like this because they weren't too jaggedy at the bottom so went all the way around the exterior and added these matches on the bottom section set that aside and let that dry and then I worked on the top and for the top of this box I really wanted to create a design so I just started in the top left corner and I just started to stagger the match sticks just ever so slightly so that as I worked my way down it kind of created this diagonal line and so I created a diagonal stripe pattern on the top of this box and and it was super easy to create because I know a lot of people use match shcks to create like star patterns or Herring bones or different types of patterns but I wanted something simple I had never done this before and this was super simple to recreate I let the excess of the matches fall off of all the edges while it completely dried down and I finished off the full front of this box with the matches that I [Music] had once I reached the very end this is what it was looking like and I use my miter shears to cut off the backside these just come in so handy for any project where you're using like small pieces of wood or you need to just miter an edge it's just so much easier than having to use a saw or any form of electrical tool so I sipped all of those off and then for the top of the box I just finished the pattern that I did on the top I just let it overflow off the edges and I just kind of repeated that all the way around all four sides and that is how I finished off this matchick box actually think I enjoyed this one the most out of all of the projects and it was the one that I was kind of like least looking forward to creating but I just love the outcome let me know which one was your favorite in the comments below look at my box how cute did this turn out I love that I left the kind of overhang on there I also absolutely love seeing the burnt tops of all of the matches I think on the top here it looks so beautiful look at the lid the design the pattern feel like I kind of popped off on this one I love this and I did all four sides and I also did it to where the lid just kind of Pops off I didn't hinge it which I definitely could and I feel like if you were to see something like this at an antique shop or thrift store this would be upwards of like $100 at least I feel so that there my friends concludes today's art DIY video I hope that you enjoyed this one I had so much fun making it and I honestly genuinely I've never liked projects more from my DIYs before like I'm going to put all three of these in my home I'm so excited even about this lamp there's always something from a DIY video where I'm like oh that's not going to be going in my home like I'll give it to a friend or something you know like that's someone else's style but these just turned out so cute I'm so happy with the outcome of all of them and I hope that you guys enjoyed this video too so if you'd like to see more kind of like historic driven DIY content like this totally give this one a big thumbs up and also make sure to subscribe to my channel I post brand new home decor content every single week and last but not least if you are shopping for fall or for Christmas our holiday shops are open over on Lone Fox and you guys we have so much stuff and I haven't even started promoting it here on the channel yet so if you're like shopping for Holiday before I start pushing it when it gets a little closer take a peek because some of the items are already selling out like I ordered so much this year crazy it's craziness and I'll catch you all on my next one bye guys [Music]