Using What I Have: Saving the Soap Pump

So, now that Rory is nearly 3, he like any toddler, can be somewhat destructive.  Pages get ripped out of books, toys thrown across the room and stuffed animals tossed down the stairs.  I've been trying to instill in him that it's important to take care of the things we have so they will last.  I try to mend, tape, or sew what I can back together because toys are expensive and let's face it-he has plenty!

I know this seems like a long stretch but this lead me to an internal dilemma of my new soap pump.  After buying our house, I splurged and bought a fancy smancy soap pump at Home Goods.  It was $12.99 and had all the colors from my kitchen.  It was a bronze base and then a coat of plaster with pieces of colored pottery all around it.  Rory, being the helpful toddler that he is decided to wash it along with his hands a month after I purchased it.  Well-I now realize why this cute pump was at Home Goods.  When plaster gets wet it falls apart...literally.  After it's proper washing pieces kept falling off and it looked ridiculous.  So, I got out a knife and finally pried the rest of the plaster and pottery off so it looked like this....

It was still very useful but certainly lacked the original beauty that influenced my purchase.  I was "this close" to throwing it in the trash but then felt like a hypocritical mother--how can I tell Rory to take care of his things if I just toss this in the trash and don't make it work?  Especially, since I just bought it?  (A stretch I know)  I didn't want to spend anymore money on it but I did want to jazz it up--insert my love for a hot glue gun here.

I have glass beads in a jar that sits on the tub upstairs so I grabbed that and dumped out the blues/greens that I liked, plugged the hot glue gun in and some twine. 

The twine that I had was too thin so I did break down and buy a roll of jute for $2.50 from JoAnn Fabrics.  After some glue gun magic and burnt fingers this is what I came up with...

I think I like my version better than the original one I bought-which leads me to think maybe I could have done this project much cheaper than the original price I paid.  At this point Josh would tell me I'm thinking too hard about it!

This mini project has me dreaming now of other wonderful things to hot glue together!