From trash to treasure in a snap

Last afternoon while I was sitting out waiting for my son to come back from school I found this piece of bark from a young coconut tree.

I picked it and thought what a lovely texture it had... looked rather like the expensive but rustically beautiful Micheal Aram creations. I brought it home and set to work on it. The whole bark is rather unstable and would not sit flat so I trimmed the edges.

Even after trimming the edges I had to weight it down with glass pebbles to flatten out  a bit of the bottom. I cleaned it just enough so the stains would still stay and then gave it a few swipes of gold paint - more at the edges and just swats inside and outside.

When that dried I sprayed on fast drying varnish so that it will stay for a while and let it dry. That is about all the treatment this requires. The rest is left to imagination. I decided that I would use it to hold diyas, preferably battery operated or tall ones holding tea lights. Eco friendly and close Nature also means extra caution.

So here are my vignettes...

Just as a display piece with a diya and my favourite decorated glass pebbles this piece of Nature looks lovely...

But wait! With IKEA's Strala battery operated lamp it looks even better.. what do you think... is one enough or maybe three?

I must say that Nature offers us the most brilliant centrepieces. Do you agree?