Something Fishy

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned that there would soon be news on the new critters to keep me company in the studio...


I've always loved all animals, fish included.  My childhood was full of critters of all shapes and sizes and for a while I had a 10 gallon aquarium in my room.  My mom had a few 55-gallon aquariums and even for a brief period, a 135 gallon one!  Some of my childhood stories about animals include fish stories.

Later on, once I was out on my own, I almost always had a Betta fish or two, but no more aquariums.
That is until the era of the "Fish Room".  For a while, I had converted a spare bedroom into a fish room and I started breeding Bettas, Guppies, and some Cichlids too.

Betta spawning tanks

Grow out tanks and cups

Betta males

I had a great time with my fish room.  Sadly, it was around this time that my life went off the rails and so then my fish days were no more.  I found homes for the fish, sold/gave away most of my equipment, and that was the end of the Fish Room.

In the time since, I've had Bettas here and there, including more recently "Mr. Fish", who lived for an astounding 5 years.  My last Betta boy found a home with some friends of our when we made the Great Move.

Jeff knows I like having a little fishy friend or two around and so shortly after we got here, he bought me a Dwarf Puffer Fish.  I named her Momo, which a friend told me is Japanese for "peach".

I've been on the lookout for a fish tank and ended up finding one for sale just a few days ago.  It was a complete setup, including a few fish.  We bought it and then I had to decide where to put it!  I wanted to have my new little friends in the studio with me and so I decided to put them on a shelf next to my desk.  I had some concerns about the shelf holding the weight, so I ended up using the center (structural) shelf and laying another shelf on top of it for extra support.

The fish included with the tank ended up being a little bachelor group of young male guppies.

Here they are in their traveling conditions from when we bought them, with low water in the tank.  I think they'll look good there:

A closer look.

I took several closeup pictures, trying to capture the fish themselves, but they are quick little buggers and this was the best I could do.

We stopped at a local store on the way home with them, to pick up food and water conditioner.  I also picked out this cup of live plants.

They are so pretty!

Here's the food and water conditioner.  Not being able to read the packaging, I'm thankful there were guppies on the label - haha.  Actually, the girl who sold us the tank showed me her bottle of conditioner and I took a picture of it with my phone...  I then showed that picture to an employee at the store and she pointed out the bottle that we bought.  Yay for modern technology helping out with a language barrier!

The tank now full of water again.  Lots more room for the little guys.

Then I added the plants and turned on the filter.  Looking good!  I love that there are several pieces of sea glass on the bottom of the tank.  It is very pretty and an appropriate local touch, since we have found a bunch of it on the beaches here.

Yep, I think they will do well here, surrounded by model horses.  ;)

Another note:  Back when I was first setting up this blog, I was digging around in all of the options and found the fish gadget.  I thought it was so awesome.  It's been a part of my blog for many years now and yes, I feed them and watch them swim around a bit whenever I am looking around on here.  ;)  The gadget gives the options for all sorts of colors, but I thought the black and orange looked most realistic.  Someday I would love to have a fish pond, but for now my blog fish work for me.

Random - A Box!

In the interest of actually getting some use out of my Craft Storage board on Pinterest, I have now made these:

Origami boxes!

The little one was actually a post-it note sized piece of paper from my computer desk.  The larger one was a piece of scrapbooking paper.  As for finished size: The small box started as a 3x3" piece of paper and ended up as a 1" square box.  The larger one started as a 10x10" piece of paper and the box size is approximately 3.5" square.

My mind is spinning with ideas for these neat boxes;  they could be used to keep all kinds of things in them!

Here's the pin where I got the idea, along with something really cool to do with them - boxes inside a box!  I can think of a lot of neat ideas for this in the way of crafty storage.

Also, I saw some pins where people made covered gift boxes this way.  I'm assuming you'd make the top just a bit bigger, so that it would fit over the bottom box as a lid.  That is definitely a neat, crafty way to give gifts.

The Studio = A Mess

A quick bit of an update on the state of things around here...


I'll be focusing on work in the studio over the next few days.  Though it might not be the type of studio work I'd prefer...  I NEED to get the mess wrangled in there.  I've got to finish setting up the shelves, put everything away, and get a good workable, useable space (finally).

For so long during the move I didn't have any of my supplies.  Then when they ALL arrived (along with the rest of our house), I did the minimum for getting things set up.  My primary goal was to get it to where I could wade into the middle of the mess and make things!  I did a little of that early last month.  However, I really have to finish the studio setup part of the move, before I can get creative again.

I'm pretty much at a stopping point on the Great Floss Winding project.  Although I now realize I'm missing a huge batch of floss.  (it may be buried in the studio mess, but I'm pretty sure I haven't seen it in there)  We are also missing a few other things, so we need to get into the last several boxes and find out if they are all actually missing or just haven't been located yet.  We've got another month or so before our deadline to file a claim for loss or damage during the move.  I still have to decide if I'm going to go through with the hassle of filing a claim for the damage to my horses.  I don't really feel like dealing with it, but of course the whole situation does bother me.

The hot muggy weather we've been having has really been a downer, but thankfully there have been some cool days mixed in lately.  If I want to even be able to get into the studio and make things on the cooler days, I'd better get busy on finishing the set up in there.  So that's the main plan for this week.

Stay tuned for more updates, including news on some little critters who will be keeping me company in the studio!  ;)

Taming the Floss Hoard

A couple of weeks or so ago, I started cranking out bobbins from cereal boxes.  That has been my primary creative task ever since.  Oh, I've been enticed by various other things I want to do and make, but so far I've stayed the course (unusual for me, haha) and here are the results so far.

When I started off, I was putting the bobbins in the box, organized by number.  

I decided I didn't like this, because: 1) I couldn't see the colors very well and 2) a lot of my floss is "off brand" and might not even have a number code to go with it.

So I changed early on to organizing by color and just making sure I wrote any identifying info (brand and number code or color) on top of each bobbin).

Much better.

Those were the ones I had wound before we made the big move.  Now, armed with a pile of cereal box bobbins, it was time to get to work.  First, I transformed this:

Into this:

Into the box!

One thing I've done for a while now is buy complete cross-stitch kits at thrift stores, for the supplies inside.  (Back in South Dakota, I had bought several large kits for as little as 50-99 cents each!)  A few of them are kits I might actually make and I keep them intact, but most are dismantled.  The fabric goes with the rest of my fabric, and the floss goes into my ever growing, messy floss stash.  No more!  (on the messy part)

Shortly after we arrived here, I found a large kit at the local thrift shop.

All of the floss that was included there has now been filed away.

And so it goes.  I now have a second box completely full after taking apart more of my thrift store kits, and I probably enough random floss still kicking around to fill a third box.  I'm finding this to be a good hot weather activity.  I can park myself in the coolest part of the house at any given time, or in front of a fan, and work away.

I think once I get ALL of it wound onto bobbins, I'll probably organize the whole mess by color.  Right now I have sort of a rainbow in each box, but I think it'd be better to have all the reds, all the blues, etc. together in the same box for future use.

My mind has also been working (always) on other things to do with floss, since it turns out I have SO much of it.  At the top of the list, aside from more saddle pads of course, is Arabian tack - something I've always wanted to do.  I've been doing a bit of research on presentation sets, halters, and native costumes.  If I get tired of winding bobbins, I'm thinking I may take a bit of a related break and try to start making some tassels.

Oooo, something shiny!  Sorry, there goes my brain, I'd better go after it.  ;)

Upcycling - Making Floss Bobbins

Shortly before our big move, I decided that I'd like to store my, ever increasing, collection of embroidery floss on the plastic bobbin, like these:

I had gone to visit my Granny and she showed me how she keeps all of her floss wound on them and the organized in a couple of the divided plastic bead boxes.  It looked really neat and I already have a bunch of those bead boxes.  Granny gave me a handful of the bobbins, and I had a few, so I wound all of the ones above.

Before we left the country, I had meant to buy more of them.  I'd priced them, but never made it back to the store to get any.  So far, I have not found them here.  Jeff had pointed out that we can order them, but I just can't see buying something like that and most likely paying more for the shipping than the purchase.

A few days ago, I was poking around on my Pinterest board for Craft Storage and I was particularly looking for ways to upcycle cardboard.  I came across an article about different uses for cereal boxes and one of them was to make the bobbins for embroidery floss.  I've heard of making your own bobbins before, but had never really considered doing it, because I thought they'd be flimsy.

However, I decided to give it a try.

A plastic bobbin, ultra fine tip sharpie, and part of a cereal box:

I traced a bunch of them, to fill up the sheet:

Then I started cutting and trimming away, leaving me with a pile of bobbins:

The other sides of them are quite colorful and random:

The article I saw had talked about how you could trace your bobbin over certain things if you wanted to have set patterns or designs/words/whatever on your bobbins, but I just did my tracing on the backside and got as many as I could out of each piece of the box.

Now to wind one:

They are actually not as flimsy as I had feared - not as sturdy as the plastic ones, but they will certainly work to better store and organize my floss.

The backside of this one ended up being orange:

They are a bit time consuming to cut out, but not too bad - once I got the process streamlined.  I definitely like the idea of upcycling something that would be "trash" into something useful (after it's done holding cereal).  I'm also all for less plastic in our world, so I think this is a win-win.

The only slight concern I have now is how they might hold up to the high humidity we are experiencing here, but so far they seem to be fine.  I haven't noticed any of the warping or dampness like I've seeing in some other paper products.  Maybe it's something in the way they make or treat the paperboard for the cereal boxes.

Next up in the upcycling of cardboard/paperboard will most likely be some organizers for the studio.  I've found several neat ideas, such as cubes, hanging closet organizers, scrapbook paper holders, and drawer/shelf/desktop organizers too.

I'm Melting!

Or at least it feels like it.

Last week we were in the mid-80's with about 65-70% humidity and I thought I was going to die.  Our house doesn't have a/c and, while I fully realize not having it is a "first world problem", I'm just not used to sitting around feeling hot, sticky, and miserable all day.

Today, we are at about 80 degrees...  with 90% humidity.  I've learned some coping strategies for myself (snacking on frozen fruit, taking cool showers, sitting in front of a fan), but I do have a pretty big concern right now.

I've heard mentions here and there about creative things not being able to be done because it's humid.  Such as mold making, resin casting, painting, pasteling, etc.  Pretty much almost everything I'm interested in doing from a model horse standpoint...  Can I still make tack?  Will epoxy still cure?   Even paper, cardstock, etc., for my paper crafting feels...  soft and damp if it is sitting out.  Can I make things with that?

I'm realizing now that I may be severely limited on what I can actually do while we are here and...  well, it has me pretty bummed out at the moment.  There's got to be a way, I know plenty of people here make things.  I'm wondering if a dehumidifier for my studio would help at all.  Maybe I will just have to work around the weather or only during certain times of the year.  I don't know.

Jeff and I are on the fence about buying a portable a/c unit.  It would be nice to have, but the $400-500 price tag for something we may only use a handful of days out of the year is giving us pause.

Does anyone know of any possible artistic concerns for working in a high humidity environment?

Can anyone offer suggestions on how to get around this problem?

I Has Paints!

;)

I bought some new paint today, to start restocking after I couldn't bring any of my paints with me on the move.

They don't have several of the colors that I'm used to, but I think I can make do.

Know what this means?  I can start painting horses again!

:D