Cutie concrete knobs project. A DIY!

I'm on Amazon yesterday and I look over on the right side of the page.  "Treat yourself," it says, thinking oh, get something nice for yourself, you don't need whatever it is but it'll make you all warm and fuzzy.  I look at the product suggestion....

Elmer's Stainable Wood Patch.  Why didn't it suggest some shoes like above?!  Hm.  Clearly I'm project predisposed across the web now.

So I have in my Pinterest stuff a folder called On the Docket in which I pinned a bunch of projects I hope to accomplish.  One of those projects is to make some concrete knobs, or hooks, or whatever, they screw into a wall or fence or whatever and you hang stuff off them.  My plan is to make some for inside and outside.

I pinned this idea originally but I kinda can't really make out what they're saying.  That's ok, I got the gist of the steps from their photos so I didn't go searching for any how-to's.


My sweetheart drinks oodles of half and half with his coffee so I saved one of the cartons for this project since it's a smooth waxed interior surface.

Here I already cut the top off.  Based on their photos then the size I'm kinda thinking about then looking at the size of this container, I needed to cut it apart and down to a smaller size.

Inside, which you can almost see, there's a little flap overlapping.  Having done lots of mold making throughout my prop career, I already knew that I wanted to avoid having that flap on the inside otherwise it would reflect on the finished product.







Next up was a bit of cutting and folding.  As a kid, I spent a lot of time with my brother, scissors, paper, and tape making all sorts of stuff, so I kind of have a leg up on this.

I cut open the container through the edge with the flap, then cut off the bottom since I a.) didn't need it and b.) didn't want that pattern showing up in the final product.

After I opened up the container, I cut it in half length-wise, into two pieces.










So here's where the folding began.  To make a smaller square I folded the edges in at random spots.  I tend to make stuff up as I go along and not measure, but it was about 3/4" to 1", those new folds I made.

I dry-fit the two pieces together to see if the size was about what I wanted for the final product, and it was close, so commence more folding and cutting and trimming and dry-fitting.

I then trimmed down the length of the container since I didn't want twelve foot long knobby things.  Ok, twelve is an exaggeration.  I was hoping to get more than one mold out of this but alas, no such luck.  Babe, drink more half and half, please.

I cut it down in length based on knowing I needed to fold up some bottom flaps.  That's a terribly formed sentence, isn't it?

I'm having a little trouble here, getting all my photos located where I want them....grrrr, bear with me.

After I got the dry-fit where I wanted and trimmed the container down, I then cut straight up the folds to start forming the bottom flaps.   Fold some more, add a little duct tape and voila, I have half the mold made.

For the other half, I cut off the initial folds I had made so I could fit the piece inside this one, looking to have as few seams and lines in the finished product as possible.  This way the inside was clear of flaps and such.  It was essentially just a folder, the second half, that I slipped inside so that those short sides in front you see here, those are on the outside.

Here's the finished little mold.  It turned out to be 3 3/4" tall and 1 3/4" square.  I rolled some duct tape and taped together the pieces inside then taped the bejesus out of it on the outside with more duct tape to make sure the thing didn't leak like a sieve.  That would suck.  Especially since I was doing all this on my dining room table.

I gave a quick dash of Smooth-On Mold Release spray inside the container as an added precaution which I already owned from other older projects but there's no need to get it unless you plan on doing lots of mold making.  You can just as easily use a dash of spray oil, or so I've heard.  Lightly though.  Or I'm sure craft stores or hobby stores or art supply stores have mold release spray if you'd rather.

I collected a few more materials from around the house.  A scoop of vinyl concrete patch that I already had from last fall's patching of the garage base.  Some sand just in case I wanted to toss some in which I didn't use.  Some plastic cups to mix everything.  Popsicle stick stirrers, of course the duct tape, a random long screw I found in my stash of miscellaneous screws, and there's the little mold.  Oh and some painter's tape.

Next up I mixed up the concrete patch stuff to the consistency of oh say, natural peanut butter.  Be careful -- use a dust mask as that stuff clouds and poofs and flies everywhere and it's a fine, fine dust bound to turn your lungs into solid lumps.  Ok, again, I exaggerate but it's not good to breathe that stuff in so protect your delicate insides please.








I got all a-twitter here, all excited, pouring the mix to the little container, hoping I'll get out the finished product that I'm picturing in my head.

As you can see, I set everything inside a plastic bag, ya know, just in case my taping job sucked.  Ahem.

So after pouring the goo in, I gave the little container a few taps to settle the mix and maybe wiggle out some air pockets.  I let it sit for a minute, oh who am I kidding, no I didn't, but you might want to before you place the screw in.

The screw didn't sink which was good but I used the painter's tape to help support it a bit.

And now we wait.  And wait.  I have no idea how long this is going to take to set up.  You'll have to come back and see the finished knob hooky thing at a later date.  My goal is to reuse this container several times so we'll see how that pans out.  I've got plenty of screws in the basement and lots of concrete patch, so maybe I'll be cranking these puppies out.

I just checked on it and there's a little water leakage but it's not bad at all.  Definitely within tolerances.  Thankfully I was smart enough to put it on top of some plastic, which sometimes, I'm not that clever.








Huh, I wonder if I could use that vinyl concrete patch for the pantry floor, or at least as a thin layer to level the darn thing out a bit before putting something else in.  Hm.  I will look into that.

In the mean time, Hailey seems to be handling this second round of chemo all right, though today she's sleepier and hasn't eaten her breakfast yet.  Of course I'm an extra paranoid Mommy and will be watching her all day, making sure she's all right.  Last time it was about this time I noticed it had started kicking in.

So, stay tuned for the final knob hook screw thingie, if it ever sets up!