Crazy Cat Lady Craft - A Fish Tank Litter Box

When we remodeled our bathroom last summer we got our cat Bella a new litter box to match the decor. Unfortunately, she refused to go in it because the rigid plastic door slammed behind her and freaked her out. So for the last 10 months we've had it doorless. I was getting tired of looking at her smelly clumps so I decided to turn it into a fish tank.

 

 Well, not a real fish tank. That's actually part of a vinyl shower curtain we had in our bathroom years ago. I loved the print so I kept in my fabric stash for years.

 

I simply cut out a small piece the size of the cat door and duct taped it to the inside top of her litter box. It's thin enough for her to easily push through and it doesn't slam behind her, plus it gives her some privacy and gives us something nicer to look at than clumpy cat poop.

 I was a bit worried she might not like it...

 But after a little investigating,

she gave me her approval by stepping inside and scratching around. Fish don't intimidate this kitty!

I Am The Eggman

Yesterday I mentioned I'd have a few more eggs ornaments to share. This afternoon I whipped out the glitter and nail polish and googly eyes and felt and fake fur and went nuts on one little egg. A little too nuts apparently, because I broke it.

It was meant to be a goldfish, complete with a tinier googly-eyed fish inside, but attempting to attach a side fin did him in and my thumb broke through. Oh well, such is the peril of working in a fragile medium. That ornament I made for Sage the other day? Here was first attempt:

D'oh! But my snowman, I'm pleased to say, came out just as I planned. Here's how...

First, I made a felt top hat. Here are the pieces:

Fold the rectangle and stitch up the edge where the two sides meet.

Place the smaller circle on top and stitch it  all the way around. If you're not adept on the sewing machine, this part might be better done by hand.

Next, turn your hat top right side out and place on top of your larger circle. Using black thread, stitch it together all the way around.

Cut a hole underneath and stuff it with fiberfill.

You could always just skip that part and have a hatless snowman though. The main things you need for this project are 3 eggs and some hot glue.

I painted the eggs with white iridescent nail polish to add some strength and make them shimmer.

After I stuffed them with some fiberfill (it gives a little extra something for the glue to stick to), I glued the eggs together at the edges.

I covered the first glue ring with a felt scarf for his neck, then painted over the second glue-ring with the white iridescent nail polish. 

Then I carefully poked holes in his sides, squirted in some glue, and inserted some sticks from a tree in the yard. I poked a hole in his face for a carrot nose (1/4 of a toothpick painted orange) and with black sequins, gave him eyes, a mouth, and buttons. Behold, Frosty the Eggman!

There must have been some magic in that carton of eggs I found.

Art to pee by

Here are some close-ups of our bathroom art:





I purchase those two paintings at St. Vincent's thrift store last month and paid $50 - more than I'd ever paid for art from a thrift store before. I just had to though. I fell in love. The detail is amazing and the egg imagry goes so well with a bird theme we have going around our house. The trees reminded me of the view in our backyard in Bedington, WV too. The colors in these paintings soon became my inspiration for the bathroom.

 This screen-print on fabric is from Ikea. It was hanging in our downstairs hall and while I was shopping around the house for more bathroom art, I realized it would be perfect.



This is a painting Sage made when he was 5. It's a snail. I love it.



I got this tile in San Antonio when I was 8 months pregnant with Sage and it's been in hte bathroom of every house we've lived in ever since.



This is a collage I got at All Aboard! in Atwater Village. The top got damage in our move so I added the sunshine at the top to cover it up.

 

Thank you for visiting the VanHorn family gallery bathroom. Don't forget to flush!

Bathroom Redo - Down with Brown, Up with Glitter!

Happy 4th of July! This time last year I was still in Los Angeles. I even braved the traffic and took the kids to Hansen Dam to see the fireworks. Erik had been living in Seattle since June 1st and we talked to him on the phone while he watched fireworks explode over Lake Washington. I'm happy to be together for the 4th of July this year.

A little over a year ago was also when we found the house we live in now. I would research houses via the interwebs and send Erik out to check them out after work, then he'd upload the pics and call me to describe the tours. We both fell in love with he house we finally got, but spent all last summer fighting banks and lenders for it. I'm so excited that this summer will have none of that drama. This summer, we're happy to have projects to work on that don't involve uprooting everything. Compared to moving, a little bathroom renovation seems easy.

I love this house, but I've never loved the front bathroom. Here are some pictures Erik took when we first got the house inspected:





It's like a step back in the seventies. Brown town. Welcome to wood grain. The pictures don't do it justice because in some parts it was peeling too. Erik didn't seem too bothered by it but I was. I said, "Mark my words, within a year this will be looking much different."

Peeling wallpaper just begs Rip me down!, so I did. As I ripped, I kept thinking of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, feeling like a crazy lady obsessed with picking at the walls...


... It is stripped off -- the paper -- in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life. /One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.../The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight./ It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.... Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision!

I even took my clothes steamer to it, which helped with the stickier pieces. Charlotte Perkins Gilman didn't think of that one! It took a few months and resulted in a pathetic looking bathroom that I was embarrassed to let people see. So last Saturday I set out to paint it.

Sage helped... for 5 minutes. The rest was all me. Erik was busy building a staircase in our backyard and the kids, well, they had to entertain themselves for a few days. Thankfully, they're at an age where they can do that.

It must be all the HGTV remodeling shows I've seen that inspired me to try a racing stripe. Here's the tape I used to make it.


And here's the paint, "Navajo Clay" textured with sand...

and glitter!

Here's how it looks on the wall...

The glitter is very subtle. Compared to the semi-gloss "Golden Mushroom", this paint is rough. Erik says it reminds him of an emery board. That stripe didn't come out nearly as perfect as it appears there, I had to spend a day carefully touching it up with a tiny paint brush. One week after I started, I was finished. A room's not done until the art is hung though, so I shopped around the house for art that I thought would work in the room.


I even painted the cabinets, inside and out. I hope I never have to paint another cabinet for as long as I live.
I also organized the heck out of the drawers. Never mind that the rest of the house was being torn apart by my tornado children, all the dental flossers and ponytail holders and band aids are neatly in place.

This is my favorite spot...

It's in the corner by the door and such a cheery way to leave the crapper.


Even George (the frog) and Jelly (the beta fish) like their newly remodeled room. They don't like each other much though.

Whew! It's done! I keep going in there and staring at it, admiring my nice straight racing stripe and remembering how I was up on the top step of the ladder painting the skylight. Occasionally the kids wonder where I am and find me in there and ask, "Why are you just sitting there staring at it?" I guess it's time to obsess over another spot of the house now.

Happy Easter!

 I just figured out how to update my blog from my phone. This changes everything!

 I hope your day is full of fresh air, flowers, and springtime sunshine.

Artsy Friday - All our studios

The old epicenter was where I met Erik. It was an old garage that a few of our friends set up studios in and started group painting projects. After a few months the building got sold and torn down and turned into a mini-mall. The new epicenter was on Route 45 just past Sheetz outside of Shepherdstown.

Part of an "Amnesia Box" of Shepherdstown pictures our friend Jen made for us when we moved to Savannah.

We fixed up this guy's old hay barn and he let us have art shows and concerts there. It was a pretty good deal for him seeing as how he got his junk-filled barn cleared out and had insulation, walls, a ceiling, track lighting and a hardwood floor installed for free, plus the grass got mowed and we planted sunflowers. We had over 20 people working on the place in some capacity or another and we put together group and solo art shows, poetry readings, bonfires, life drawing sessions, and silkscreening nights. Everything was great until the damn Zoning Commission got involved. We were getting press and a pro bono lawyer was helping us out but in the end it succumbed to the Man. Looking back I can't believe were so driven to do it all in the first place, but these were the days before the internet (and cell phones) and also before many of us got 9-5 jobby jobs and had houses of our own to fix up and a bunch of kids running around. We were so green and naive back then. I bet if we had the space to do it again we could do it legit this time. But where's the fun in that?

Us inside the epicenter. We look so young. and dirty.
Also taken by Jen.

Erik and I have always had to make room for our art stuffs. The trick is to amass so much stuff that you can't NOT carve out space for a studio, even if it's crammed into a corner of the dining room, tucked up in a loft, in a garage, on a back porch, etc. (these are all places our stuff has inhabited). We've also learned that we're not very good at sharing a workspace. I don't like stepping around his gigantic paintings and he doesn't like pulling pins out of the soles of his feet. I often think about how much room we would have if we didn't have such cumbersome hobbies, but then I have no idea how else we would fill those spaces.

Backyard in Bedington (snowing). The studio is the long building further back.

Our first house (that we owned) in Bedington came with an old stable. We spent the entire time we lived there slowly fixing it up ourselves - installing insulation, walls, a floor, a ceiling, track lighting (deja vu) and having painting sessions and dartboard championships out there. It was right after we had Sage and couldn't go out and party anymore. It's pretty good for marital bonding too.

Not like that. Get your mind out of the gutter. I mean, balancing sheet rock above your head while standing on ladders and screwing it into the ceiling together, then standing back and looking at your new and improved space makes for a sense of accomplishment. We barely even got to use the studio we built because we moved out to California soon after. I hope whoever bought our house appreciates it.

We're too busy to undertake such time consuming endeavors like that now. We've got two kids and I've got kokoleo orders to fill and Erik's got a real job and Ballad of Sinister to work on. So this time, we hired professionals to build us a studio. Lest you think we're rich and can throw our money around the house all willy-nilly - we're not. We refinanced our mortgage and locked in a new lower rate and the bank gave us a bunch of money for home improvements. I don't know how exactly it works, but it's awesome. Too bad almost half of it got eaten up by our recent deluge of unexpected bills. But! We're still going through with the addition, even if it means we'll be broke for a while.

Here was the screened-in back porch before:

And then they did this to it:

and this

and now it looks like this.

They're coming back Sunday to finish it. I hope. I trust them and it looks like they're doing a good job. They're fast! And it's strong too. And it has electricity. And soon it will have windows and doors. I can't wait to move in.

Artsy Friday - Sage's world

Sage has been drawing variations of this scene lately. Here's another:

They all have the same elements - a sun, birds, grass, trees, a boy (Sage) with a square frame around him, a line hanging down from the square, and a box off to the left side with circles in it.

It's his "favorite place" - our backyard. The square to the left is our tiny side porch that can barely hold the three chairs (two for us, one little one for him) and a flowerpot we have on it. The frame around the boy is a rusty (albeit sturdy) old clothesline and the line hanging down is his swing. It's a sorry excuse for a swing set, but he loves it.
Poor kid. When he was a baby and we were still living in West Virginia he had all this (for about 1/5 the price)

and he doesn't even remember it. They don't make land like that around these parts. Luckily, Sage doesn't feel like he's missing anything. He loves his swing and the rusty old clothesline it hangs from. It's his "favorite place."