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By Amber, on July 31, 2011, at 10:00 pm This is a project that was many years in the making (thousands, if you want to be literal). When I lived in New Jersey I bought a multi-compartment shadowbox that I intended to fill with various treasures. For some reason, I never did it. While I had my rock collection out the other day, I finally pulled together enough elements from my childhood fossil and nature collections to finish this project.
(As an aside, I got my shadowbox from Michael’s, but I don’t see it on their website, so you’ll have to check your store. I did find one that looks identical on Target’s website.)
I set out all of my items onto the background, set the dividers over top, and began gluing. I intended to use putty in case I wanted to do something else with the specimens in the future, but quickly realized that hot glue was going to be far more practical, particularly for the most fragile items like the sand dollar:
 If you make a critical mistake or just want a different background color, you can buy a piece of posterboard to replace the background and cut it to size. In my shadowbox there is a different backing piece that goes behind the background and attaches the board to the frame. If yours doesn’t have this, I suggest buying the posterboard.
Once you’re done, set the glass and frame on top, gently tilt the whole assembly, secure the fasteners, et voila:
For as many years as I put this off (probably about 5), it took maybe 20 minutes at most to put together and turned out even better than I expected. I’m trying to figure out what else I can give the shadowbox treatment. :)
What would you put in your shadowbox?
By Amber, on July 28, 2011, at 9:39 pm As a child, I had a lot of collections. As an adult…I still have a bunch of them. Most of them have been sitting in boxes since we got to Texas three years ago. They bring me absolutely no enjoyment that way, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to part with them!
I was recently inspired by a friend’s home to pull some of those treasures back into the light of day and keep them there. Read on to see how you can pass off your childhood collections as decor!
I started with my rock and mineral collection:
Also needed: an apothecary jar (I got mine from Michael’s, but these are so popular right now that you should be able to find them at any large craft store) and tongs. I thought I would need the styrofoam, but I didn’t. You might. It depends on how big of a nerd you are.
Start filling! My strategy was to fill by color. I had an enormous chunk of pyrite, so I used the tongs to carefully place that in the middle of the very bottom and put smaller pieces of pyrite, hematite and anything sparkly around it. I also placed the larger, less-interesting stones (pumice, unpolished marble) into the middle of the column as I went, which prevented me from needing to cut a piece of the styrofoam as filler. If you do need it, you might want to spray it first with that craft paint that looks like stone finish.
When you’re done, you’ll have something like this:
Follow the jump to see the second project!
Continue reading Childhood collections, all grown up
By Amber, on March 29, 2011, at 10:00 pm This is the speech I gave tonight at Toastmasters, and the pictures I used. Links are (obviously) not my material; photos posted here are.
My grandfather always used to tell me I was a weird kid, because I had Barbies and Care Bears and My Little Pony, but I preferred to be outdoors, catching frogs and insects. In my bedroom I would pour over my field guides, identifying the species I’d seen and the ones I hoped to see. My parents thought I would go on to study entomology, and some days I wish I had. For now, my guest bedroom is a shrine to my fantasy life as a naturalist, with mounted insects and nature prints adorning the walls. Tonight I’ll be bringing a little of that fantasy to life, and telling you about three of my favorite insects.
To understand my favorite insect, we have to go back to the summer of 1987 in Northern Virginia. I was seven years old, and suddenly the summer air was abuzz with this sound. That’s the periodical cicada, sometimes called the 17-yr locust, though they belong to a different order than locusts. They have the longest lifecycle of any insect, spending most of it underground feeding on the roots of the tree where they were born, and because the many broods across the US emerge in different years, the six species making up the 13- and 17-year broods don’t get a chance to crossbreed. In 1987 the emergence of Brood X, the Great Eastern Brood, formed a carpet across my world, leaving little brown nymph molts clinging to every surface:
 Alien in appearance, smooth to the touch, and completely harmless, the adults fascinated and delighted me. When Brood X was due again in 2004 I was living in New Jersey, and I closely followed the Washington Post’s frenetic coverage of the anticipated emergence. It’s fair to say I was just as frenetic, but unfortunately they mostly gave my area a miss. However, a couple summers ago in Hill Country, I happened upon a late-night molt: 
The next insect I want to share with you is the firefly, also known as the lightning bug or glow worm, depending on where you grew up. Did you catch fireflies in a jar as a kid? I did, and I can’t think of summer without remembering chasing them all over the yard, catching them in a jar, then taking the into a dark bathroom to watch them flash. Unfortunately for kids growing up in the western half of the US, they are mostly stuck with non-luminous fireflies. There are over 2000 species of firefly, and while all of the nymphs are luminous, not all of the adults are. The ones that are flash in yellow, green, or red. To me, fireflies are definitely one of those feel-good insects that everyone kind of likes, like butterflies, but you might be surprised to know that they are vicious as larvae — they will hunt down slugs and eat them, and they’ve been seen ganging up on earthworms! One thing I never knew about fireflies until a couple years ago is that sometimes, huge groups of them flash synchronously. There are reports that they actually do this in a lot of places, but one of the largest, most stunning displays in the US can be seen every June in Elkmont, TN, in the Great Smoky Mountains. It’s become such a popular attraction that you have to arrive hours before dusk just to get through the line for the trolley that takes you to the viewing area. I haven’t had a chance to see if, but hopefully someday I will.
Finally, we come to the bee. To say bees are one of my favorite insects is oversimplification, since there are 20,000 species divided amongst nine families, but I suppose for me it would be a tie between the industrious honey bee, whose work I’m a big fan of, and the adorably rotund bumblebee. The department of agriculture estimates that bee pollination adds $15 billion annually in crop value, meaning that you can thank a bee for one in every three bites of food.
  Bumble bees are used commercially as specialty pollinators; the vibrational frequency of their buzzing releases pollen from certain plants like tomatoes. And did you know that half of the honey bees in the US are responsible for pollinating California’s almond crop? Honey bees aren’t even native to the US; they were brought here from Europe (I think I forgot to say that sentence!).
 As you may have heard, honey bees are facing a serious population decline known as Colony Collapse Disorder. Theories about the cause include parasites and pesticides. You can help protect the bee population, and ergo our food supply, but doing a few things: you can be judicious with your pesticide use and avoid spraying during mid-day when they are out and about, and you can encourage bee-friendly plants in your garden. As an aside, I was terrified of bees as a preschooler and identified ALL flying insects, including butterflies, as ‘stinging bees.’ Ironically, I was never stung by a bee until this past fall.
Having said all that, there are some insects with no redeeming value — bedbugs and fleas come to mind — but I hope I’ve given you a little appreciation for some pretty amazing insects. I wish you all a summer full of singing cicadas, flashing fireflies, and buzzing bees.
By Amber, on November 7, 2010, at 10:00 pm Yesterday I had my zillion photos from New Mexico open and I was narrowing them down to what I wanted to share next, and then somehow I lost all my progress. Doh! I don’t have the energy to redo that just now, so I thought I’d share some assorted snaps from the past week.
Who’s that reading my favorite book?
It’s Sammy! He was a birthday gift from my parents. He looks great on our bookshelves!
He came with a note from my mom:
Mark and I ordered burritos the other night for pick-up. There is a Freebirds just up the street and I think they put something addictive in the meat. The staff is young and cheerful, and we have long suspected that at least a few of them are having special smoke breaks during their shifts. Evidence:
I ordered two so I wouldn’t have to make lunch, and they made sure I knew which ones were mine:
When I sat down at my desk the next day, I noticed the bag:
Speaking of places with herbally-enhanced employees, we made a Whole Foods run tonight and I picked up some treats containing my own favorite herb:
I have a slight obsession with rosemary. I sort of have a personal theory that rosemary is the new bacon. You heard it here first. I’m very excited about these!
Also spotted at Whole Foods (it looked a lot better on my 1″ x 1″ cell phone screen!):
You know the holidays are here when the sock monkeys show up en masse!
By Amber, on September 2, 2010, at 10:20 pm In the last post about My Book About Me, I mentioned that I sometimes have difficulty choosing a favorite. I’m a typical engineer; ask me a simple question and my initial answer to you will probably be ‘it depends.’ Multiple-choice questions can be torture.
A note about watermelon: I typically eat it several days a week.
But about that indecisiveness — nowhere is it more apparent than in my treatment of the ‘When I Grow Up, I Want to Be’ page.
For those keeping score at home, I was considering a career as a mother-millionaire-veterinarian-singer-dancer-farmer-doctor-nurse-lion tamer-policeman-artist-dentist-mailman-actor-banker-tv star-football player-movie star-photographer-telephone operator-gold miner (especially that one, I circled it five times)-judge-jockey-president-magician-mayor-camel driver-acrobat-dog trainer-fisherman-yak trainer. I was also thinking maybe a cowboy-indian-astronaut, but possibly just as a hobby.
I’m an engineer, which was not a choice, but I’m still considering farmer-astronaut-millionaire.
I have always liked to read and I fondly remember the basket in my bedroom that I would fill each week or two with new library books, but I am pretty sure the following number is a fabrication:
What six-year old knows how many books they’ve read?
Okay, I have to prepare you now for the saddest page of the whole book — the autograph page:
“Most kids can’t get them all.” How many kids get none? In my defense, all of the relatives lived far enough away that we didn’t see them often. As to the rest, that is what we call foreshadowing. But seriously, like most children I was taught not to talk to strangers. And everyone I don’t already know is a stranger. Don’t ask me to explain how I know anybody at all.
True story: once I was very young and I was at the mall with my mom, walking through an awesome aquarium that was set up in one of the storefronts. A woman pushing a stroller with a son about my age told me that he would like to share his candy. So I forcefully said, “No!” — because stranger offering candy, duh. I don’t remember anybody’s reaction, but a minute or two later my mom told me it probably would have been okay that time. And I have been utterly confused about rules (and strangers) ever since.
All of that stuff kind of helps explain why I don’t know anybody in the city where I’ve lived for two years. I happen to think I’m a pretty nice person:
Wait, what?
I’d like to leave you with two original stories that I wrote. Transcript after the photo (I have added some punctuation).
Story #1: There was a sheep and she was 1 year old and she was just born. Her mother loved her so much that she did not leave her same with her dad. He protected them. The End. PS. There was a dog and she had been traveling for 8 years and was 20 years old. Saw a goat and the same thing happened to him.
Story #2 (‘A littel secret’): Ones a brontasaras came to his class. He told dueplotacus a littel secret about his mom and dad geting davorst. Dueplotacus said mine did to. Soon school was out thae went home dueplotacus invited brontasorus over. Thae had fun and lived happalie ever after. The end.
By Amber, on August 31, 2010, at 10:00 pm Sammy, the Crow Who Remembered may be my favorite book, but I must admit that there is a close second…
You may have caught the headlines about a recent study which claims that one’s personality is pretty much set by age 7. I can attest that this is true. After all, though I started this book in my fifth year, I was six — er, seven when I finished it (did Michelangelo paint all roads leading to a bear in the woods in one day? No, he did not), so you can assume that anything I am about to share with you is still true today.
But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. As the book says, first of all there is one thing you should know: I am a feminist.
Sometimes I wear a big false nose.
Occasionally I have bad hair days.
I often find it difficult to choose just one favorite.
Oh my gosh, how did I know that those are my favorite colors??
As is to be expected, this book is too important to share just a few pages. Come back Thursday night to get a little more personal, including my career aspirations, an amazing look into the workings of my mind, and the saddest page of the entire book, which is strikingly prescient.
By Amber, on August 29, 2010, at 10:00 pm I was reminded of this book by a recent post at Childfree Chic:
My parents got a bunch of children’s books that had been purged from the local library system, and this was one. Apparently it wasn’t very popular — it appears to have been checked out just once.
However, out of all the beautiful, colorfully illustrated books I grew up with, this black and white book from 1969 became my favorite.
It was about a crow that had made friends with a woman who lived at the beach, as well as with her cat, her grandchildren, and a seagull. In the story, Sammy plays with the children every day until he meets a lady crow and flies away with her and some others.
Ultimately, Sammy misses his people too much and leaves the other crows, returning to his friends at the beach.
I’ve always loved crows because of this book — they’re all Sammy to me.
What was your favorite book as a child? How did it influence you?
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