Cardboard Christmas

Good afternoon all. Here is my very 1st coconut house build. I modeled it after a home in my neighborhood. Since the house was built in the 30's, I naturally made it the look of the "green spot" houses of that particular era. It was hard, sometimes frustrating to work on, and I would have probably done a few things different, but truly-- a labor of love! Have a great weekend my friends...

One word!...EXCELLENT!...your own coconut?...vibrant colors!...the more, the better!...again...excellent job...

my very best regards...Howard...

Great job! Now that you've done your first I hope there will be many more to follow.

That house is PERFECT for a coconut. The colors are beautiful. I love the green spots too.

Will:

Is the coco homemade or Peter's.

I tried to make my own a year or two back.
Found it tough to make.

If you did make your own.

Could you give a quick run down on the process.

Steve

Thanks so much everyone for the very kind comments. I am touched! I will definitely be building more (I am building one as of now, it's very different!) Yes Howard, it's my own coconut. For the colors to come out as they did, was a real challenge!

Steve:

Yes, it's my own "home-grown rolled" coconut. It was NOT easy to make, and it was NOT easy to apply either. I had one heck of a learning curve on how to make/apply that fuzziness! I have been working on this stuff since last June (almost a year) and I literally ruined several batches of different colors to get it to turn out like what you see in these pictures. The "white" was the hardest of them all. I finally did get it to that snow-white as Brian B did, but with much trial & error.

I love a good challenge, and on top of that, I live on a very modest budget as the wife finishes her schooling. So-- with that said, I started on my stubborn-headed quest to do it until I figured it out (atleast my own way of course! ). The methods I used to make it are a lengthy process, but-- in general terms, you need a very high-speed blender, ( I have 2 of them), a home-made "sifter" I constructed from buying some screening and building a frame using 2X2's, some rice straw (I finally purchased & processed some from a grower. Whew! What a chore that was! A whole 40 lb. bail-- ). Super concentrated liquid fabric dyes (I actually got mine from my wifes Aunt. She works in a textile processing mill in the Philippines.) You can use "Rit" brand, but it takes alot of it to get it to the "vibrant look" that I liked, so I purchased 1gl. jugs of the "primary colors" and got ahold of their mixing ratios to make a myriad of shades and hues. I have enough of the these dyes to probably last a lifetime now! This stuff is so thick, it almost looks like a paint, or printers ink. You need brand new bleach for the white coco, not "aged" stuff (follow on the forum post under "coconut" for bleaching/rinsing) and have a fruit dehydrator(s) on hand to dry it verrry slowwwly. I spent around $500 to get all that I needed to do this, (blenders, dehydrators, supplies) but I sold off some of my more rare collection of putz houses to fund it. This will be "the rest of my natural life" hobby, so I did it this way to give me much joy as I grow older and spend quality time building with my children and someday grandchildren. I am 50 now, so-- I'm living my crafting dream! It did take a big financial/time commitment on my part, but my wife (God bless her tolerant soul!) understands and supports me 100% in what I'm doing. I will tell all of you, that I really have a high respect for Pete Oehmen and what he's done for our hobby. I also hold in high regards our good friend Tom Hull, in figuring out how to apply this fuzzy concoction! Both men need a standing ovation for their contributions!

I hope this helps Steve. I've got quite a bit of coconut "stored up" now. If you would like to try some on a project, please kindly email me at: therealwill65@gmail with your postal address, and I'll send you a couple of different colors when I have a spare moment away from watching my 2 lil' tykes! I STILL owe Lynn some windows too! LOL.. Again, thanks all for your kind words of encouragement and I hope to post some more pics of my next new project soon. Happy weekend everyone!

Will, the coco looks great. So does the whole house. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks Paul. It was a fun build. Hey Steve, if you email me your address, I will send you out some coconut. Also, I will email you more detailed information about how you can make a batch of coco on the cheap sir!

Regards,
Will

Hello Will, The email address you supplied here won't go through? therealwill65@gmail I tried to post this message to you:

I really enjoyed the Putz House you build and displayed over at the Forum. Great
choice and bright colors. That makes for a wonderful Putz Scene addition.
I was reading, with interest, your post about coconut over at cardboardchristmas. I'm glad someone
was able to get some real rice straw. I've been trying for over 5 years to get my hands on some. I'd
be glad to purchase some from you if you still have that bale? LOL
From everything that I know about the rice straw and your description on the dying it I don't
believe that the Japanese used rice straw? When you told me how much and what kind of
dye that you used to color the coconut I knew something wasn't right. I think everybody knows
I use wheat straw. It's plentiful here in the midwest of course. However, it's not your everyday
straw. It has to be straw grown in a very wet year. The straw comes out of the fields very light
in color, getting close to white. The darker the natural straw the harder it is to control the color
that you want. Yellow straw when trying to dye it blue will become green. Any light colors you
try to make will become an undesired dark shade of that color or even totally different.
A lot of the time you'll want to start with an off white or a pure white straw. (Brian has probably
taught you how to make white straw). There are a couple of inherent problems in achieving
pure white straw. One of them is that you lose the luster/shine of the coconut and that defeats
the whole purpose of using coconut. It's the shine that gives the coconut it's uniqueness.

From the internet pictures I can't really see the shinny silica outer coating on the stalks of
the rice stem? With the wheat straw you can see that luster ten feet away.
When I'm making a batch of coconut (usually 2 ounces at a time) I start with 35cc of water
and, depending on my desired color, 5 to 15 drops of coloring. For most colors the 15
drops would make a dark rich shade. From your description of how much dye you need
it just doesn't sound right? When I used to use sawdust to make a faux coconut then I'd
use the quantities of coloring that your expressing. You know what makes the straw
shinny and what holds the color, right?

Please let me know if I can purchase some rice straw from you. I'd really appreciate
the opportunity to play with some.

Hope to hear from you, Pete
Pete R. Oehmen
N3251 State Road 67
Lake Geneva, WI 53147
262-245-9652

Hello Pete!

So good to hear from you. I was wondering when you would "pipe in" and join us on this post! lol... Well, 1st of all-- let me start from the beginning:

I got a hold of some rice straw down in So. Missouri. I picked up what was left over in a field after their "Fall cut". I took what I had gathered in trash bags, met them at their barn, and they put it through their square baler machine. After that, I took it home, and started grinding it. I did go through it of course, and take out the undesirable amount and just ground what I thought was good to use which was in all reality only about 20% of it. It ground well, but the texture was not what I was hoping for. Long story short, I made big dye baths at my Mom's farm in Kentucky in some plastic basins she had there. I used alot of Rit dye doing this (thus, the large amount of dye used) and I dried it outside on some old screen doors we had outside in our out building. After the dry, I was not very pleased with the results. Basically, it looked and felt horrible! I just chucked it all. I was pretty disheartened by this time and almost gave up, but-- my sweet wife, who's from the Philippines, saved the day. She contacted her Aunt there and had her get me some industrial strength fabric dyes. The dye was really cheap, but sending it here was not! Also, she had one of her family members track down some straw for me. After a few months, I was greeted at the door with a package. It had the dyes, a bottle of fabric whitener, and a compacted bag of some straw in it. Just a note: the straw was "processed" and not just raw out of some field. It was shrink wrapped and had the dimensions of about the size of a cracker box. They had told me that her family had found a distributor of straw that's used for making hats, weaving, crafts, stuffing, etc. It was very white and shiny. One thing about the Philippines is that they grow crops year round. Their soil is very dark and very mineral rich because of volcanic activity in the distant past. Also, it's a very wet/moist/humid country (I lived there off & on several times over the years) thus, like you said in your post, that the ground "must be wet" for a good crop harvest of what you use in your own coconut making process.There are so many varieties of rice and other grains there that it's mind blowing to say the least! To be honest with you Pete, I really don't know what grain stock this “new batch” is, because they didn't know either. But, hey-- it worked for me! As far as "shininess", my camera is not the best and I am not a good photographer like Howard! lol.. It does have a nice shine to it when seen in person though. Again, it had been a "processed" straw, so that could also be a reason for the intense, vivid color batches. Whatever the reason may be, I couldn't rightly tell you. I'm sorry sir, I am not a chemist; just a hard headed guy trying to make a batch of coconut! I literally have around 50 coco houses that need some bad restoration, thus the making of my own. As far as the white coco, I had some whitening agent sent to me as well. I tried Brian's method, along with using “new” bleach, but it still didn't come out like the “silvery white” like that of our predecessors. So, I asked for some help from my wife's Aunt who works on the fabric processing plant (before they sent my package) and got a 500 ml. bottle of fabric whitener along with the dyes. This is when I had the “breakthrough” and got the white I was looking for. As far as getting some of my “stash” to you, I must say at this time, I can't. I don't have any of that 1st batch left to send. My colored coco and my white coco that I've made is not a lot and I'm keeping that for my own personal restorations over the next several months. Actually, the stuff I sent to Steve is what I made from a straw wreath I bought from Hobby Lobby last year using the Rit dyes. That, I do have several batches of, so I don't mind sending some. It'll just be enough for his own next project. Hopefully, we will go back to the Philippines during this Christmas vacation. We will hopefully have some savings then and I will buy some of that straw direct from the supplier. When I do get some more, I will happily just send you some for free Pete. Well, that's the whole story everyone! My incredible and heart wrenching journey through coconut making. Again Pete, I respect you so much for what you've accomplished with this medium. Your research inspired me to try it out on my own. Like I said-- once I go back to the Philippines, I will get some in the mail for you sir. Thanks so much for recognizing my efforts in this project...

Cheers to all,

Will~

P.S. BTW, the gmail does work. Sorry it didn't come through for you. Here it is again: therealwill65@gmail.com