Making a Wishing Well From a Garbage Can

As you know if you read this blog much, we are doing "Snow White" for our camp this year. Each different church girls group makes a "mail box" for the girls to write cute notes to each other. They then place the notes in the units mailbox for their friends and family.

When thinking of a cute "mailbox" for "Snow White" theme, I thought a wishing well where they could crank a basket up and down to deliver the mail would be fun. 

I asked around to see if anyone in our area had a wooden yard wishing well but the more I thought about it and drove around town looking at them, they were always weathered and falling apart and didn't look like the rock wishing well in the movie and I didn't want to have to transport that and spiders in my car. It wouldn't be easy to take down and I worried it would be heavy as well. 


As I pondered on it, I thought perhaps I could make one out of a garbage can. I drew up a little sketch of what I thought I could do with one and went to buy one. 

I did look online for "garbage can wishing well" to see what came up or had been done to make wishing wells before and there were only a few and they were wedding one's in white but I was looking more for a real looking well. 
 
I found some wood looking contact paper and covered the lid with it to make it look like a wooden shingled top on the well. It stuck quite well but you could always use brown duct / duck tape on the inside if it didn't stick well.


I then found some wood grain looking fake leather stuff. I figured I could use old wood but thought the wood grain would match the top a bit better. I took some of the old slats from the benches I used for the wedding, (See a post about that here) and wrapped the wood grain fabric around them and used a staple gun to hold the fabric onto the side posts.
 
I drilled holes into the bottom sides of the garbage can the size of the width of the wooden slates. I did the same at the top of the can and on the edges of the lid to hold the wooden slats into place.

I like the powershot staple gun as it goes with gravity and I don't have to use my hand to compress it but I can just use my weight to push it down.

I got some ivy and a bucket at the second hand store. I actually bought an ice bucket and was going to cover it with the wood grain contact paper but figured the other one I found was cuter as far as buckets go so I decided to use that one.

I will write more about this and show more details on how I put it together on my next post but for now, I am having a bout of "Sititus" and dragged all day. Finally realized I wasn't taking my iron pills. I couldn't get anything done today as I kept ending up on the couch and finally I just took an hour nap as I couldn't take it anymore. It would be nice to get feeling  better.