#recycled cereal box

[vamprisms]

worst thing about living by the woods all your life is that you become so so familiar with all of the nearby Creature Sounds but occasionally you will hear a Creature Sound you have not heard before

[dumpsterbooks]

One thing that's great (for me personally) about bookbinding is that while I DO want to make perfect, beautiful, Instagram-worthy books, bookbinding materials are cheap enough that I can try out a bunch of different techniques on scraps and not feel guilty about "wasting" materials

After all, if I dug it out of the trash/recycling, it was done being used anyway. Not much I can do to mess *that* up.

[catwouthats]

I am going to throw knives *gets up and throws knives*

I am going to scream now *screams into pillow*

I am going to break something now *finds an old piece of trash to rip a part or to stab with a knife*

I am going to bite something now *finds a kitchen tool that has a soft silicone or wood handle and pray it doesn’t break*

funny phrases to use when something goes wrong instead of jokingly saying "i'm going to kms":

i'm going to kill god

i'm going to delete my blog

i'm going to explode

i'm going to blow up this entire website

i'm going to become the joker

this is going to be my villain origin story

i'm being so brave about it

fuck it we ball

god had to nerf me because i was too powerful

i'm too pretty for this

all according to plan

feel free to add on

[ursacanid]

I generally encourage everyone to recycle and therians are no exception.

It is a beautiful experience to make something new out of what you already have. Cardboard, cans, soda tabs, plastic, boring and/or damaged clothes.

General tip: You can mix laundry softener and acrylic paint to make fabric paint. It may fade over several washes, but the paint keeps very well if placed in a container in the fridge.

I am starting a youtube channel called UrsaCanid where I will be giving tutorials on some of this list as well as video essays about therianthropy and hopefully therian interviews down the line.

Here are some ideas for ways to create joy out of junk:

1. Masks. Thin cadboard like from cereal boxes are perfect for masks and BirdyDogs has youtube tutorial on both feline and canine cardboard masks.

2. T-shirt yarn tails. Look up how to make t-shirt yarn and keep the strad thin. Then follow the typical yarn tail instructions minus brushing it out.

3. Claws. This can be made of either just cardboard or cardboard and metal from a soda can. Either method uses a good bit of hot glue. It is difficult to explain over text, but generally you make a ring out of cardboard for each of your fingers (marking which one is which) then you form the claw with your chosen other material. You then apply it and build it up with hotglue. Fingernail polish works really well for coloring them afterward. I will have a tutorial for this up soon.

4. Make your own kin plush out of t-shirt material and put something important or meaningful inside like at build a bear. You can then paint it or sew on buttons or random trinkets.

5. Paint. Your. Clothes.

6. Collect tiny junk like soda tabs, bread clasps, bottle caps, etc and make jewlery or a sensory jar. This is a particularly scavenger aimed activity.

7. Put packaging that has your theriotype on it up as wall decorations. If it's plastic, sew it onto stuff like a patch.

8. Be resourceful. Nothing, and i mean NOTHING, has only one purpose.

Sploot wide, kick hide, take pride

-UrsaCanid

[spotsandsocks]

Vampire!Buck munching on cardboard because it feels kinda good

Eddie: Wtf are you doing Buck?

😆😆😆

Well that had just put a big smile on my face thank you - and now beloved anon I hope you read this and enjoy (based in same universe as my recent vamp! Buck fic.

“Can I have this?”

Eddie looks over his shoulder to see Buck holding up the box that Christopher’s new trainers got delivered in.

It’s an innocent enough request Buck must need to post something, so he says yes. Why wouldn’t he, it’s good to recycle after all.

It’s odd though because he spots it the next time he’s at Buck’s loft in the recycling bin. It’s definitely the same one because it has the same logo on it. Except it now has several dozen little puncture marks along the edges. Odd but not anything particularly worrying.

Except he finds the same puncture marks on not one but two boxes in the storage closet at the station the following week and then again in a cereal box in his own recycling bin. That one’s been shoved down to the bottom but the wind caught him as he was carrying it all out to the bins so he ended up collecting cardboard and paper from his front yard and staring at the now familiar marks in his own cereal box that he knew he hadn’t put there. It can’t be mice, the bite marks are too big, and that’s what they are bite marks. It looks like a cat has been chewing along the edge, he doesn’t have a cat though. What he does have is a vampire for a boyfriend. A theory starts to form along with a plan to get to the bottom of this little mystery.

He starts leaving out more boxes at home and at Buck’s, also at work to test the theory.

It’s not untill he’s letting himself into Buck’s loft that he gets to the bottom of it. As he walks in he catches sight of Buck behind his kitchen island, the door opening has his boyfriend jumping half way into the sky and spinning so his back is to the door. He had something in his hand. Eddie just catches the sound of something firm but not heavy hitting the ground as Buck turns back around, the perfect picture of guilt.

Trying not to sound too amused he asks his boyfriend casually“what ya doing?”

“Nothing.”

Eddie is well versed in “Buck” and that nothing was definitely a something.

He wanders over until he’s on the same side of the island and he’s looking down at their feet while Buck is looking anywhere but.

On the floor between them is a cardboard box. Eddie stares at his competition.

“Well I can’t say I’d expected to be replaced by the recycling.”

Buck pushes his shoulder with a roll of his eyes and a quiet “shut up” He’s a delightful shade of pink so he must have fed recently.

“Is this another stupid diet?”

Eddie manages to keep a straight face and is rewarded with the reaction he’d hoped for.

“Fuck off! That was a food plan!”

Eddie gives into the grin. “Sure thing baby, and the cardboard is???”

“I just like it ok. It feels good, fun. I like punching the little holes”

Eddie almost loses it when Buck makes a little biting gesture to demonstrate.

“Do you now?”

“Yeah.” Buck shrugs half a smile on his face, “I like making patterns. “

Eddie nods with an amused pout as he starts to unpack the shopping he’d brought over so they could cook, “ok then, don’t let me stop you, nibble away Picasso. ”

Buck scoops to pick up the box and toses it towards the recycling. “You’re hilarious- really”

“At least I know what to get you for Christmas this year.” Eddie smirks at the response.

“Don’t you dare!”

He does dare and gets his ridiculous adorable vampire boyfriend a range of cardboard boxes of various sizes, types and construction for Christmas. Buck pulls a face and throws a pillow at him when he opens his gift but his eyes light up anyway and he starts a range of experiments that keep him happy for hours as he works through the different textures to find out which ones are his favourite.

Eddie watches with a fond and indulgent smile. Chris shakes his head in despair and Buck with a delighted grin finally declares that a medium weight corrugated cardboard provides the superior biting experience by far; at least in terms of cardboard.

He makes it perfectly clear later that his top favourite thing to bite is still Eddie.

[lezzballer]

Diana Taurasi sleepover headcanons

(Completely SFW!! I just wanted to use that picture to get your attention 😇)

(That picture is from 2010 so these headcanons are from that era too)

∞ Diana's place is cute enough to be on HGTV. But there's more clutter than you expected

∞ There's art and family pictures on her walls. She has a nice glass case full of old momentos. But she doesn't have any trophies anywhere

∞ Her living room has a DVD shelf and some old game consoles. The coffee table is piled high with lifestyle and sports magazines

∞ She chats with her mom on the phone in Spanish for a few minutes while you thumb through her magazines

∞ Her kitchen cupboards are stocked with unopened bottles of fancy liquor that she doesn't really drink anymore. Her fridge is stocked with hard seltzer and regular seltzer. And her recycling bin is full of empty bottles of fancy wine. She can't cook anything besides cereal, toast, sandwiches, sliced fruit, and coffee. She offers to make all five of those things for you

∞ Her room looks clean but only because she hastily tidied it up while making you wait outside. On her bedside table is a biography of Julius Caesar. There's an old stuffed animal sitting on the bench at the foot of her bed

∞ Her huge walk-in closet resembles a department store with the men's section and women's section all mixed together. There's a glass box displaying watches sitting on top of a locked safe containing even more watches. The shoe situation is reasonable because she stores most of her shoes elsewhere. In the back of the closet is the door to her bathroom. That bathroom contains a lifetime supply of hairspray. By the sink, there's a colorful glass bong she forgot to put away

∞ At dusk, she goes around and checks to make sure all the doors and windows are locked

∞ She'll cuddle up with anyone whether you're just a friend or something more. During the day, she's always on the move and she's larger than life. But as she's sitting by your side at night, you notice she's suddenly very small

∞ If you spend the night at her place, she does not shut up the entire time. She will just keep talking and talking unless you bluntly tell her to be quiet so you can sleep. You need to be assertive about making her be quiet or else she'll keep thinking of things to say

∞ She's an insomniac. She does not sleep all through the night. She just lies there with her eyes closed replaying basketball games in her head. But once she finds the right person to sleep next to, she'll sleep more soundly

∞ She wakes up at 5am and makes coffee every morning. You don't hear her alarm because she wakes up 3 minutes before it goes off and silences it

∞ She makes her bed every morning and neurotically changes her sheets more than necessary. But she can't make her bed this morning because you're sleeping in it

∞ By the time you wake up, she's already showered, dressed, and bunned. And the coffee is cold. She won't reheat your coffee because reheating coffee goes against her values. She insists on taking you to a cafe on the way to the gym

∞ She drives to the cafe and finishes the story she was telling last night right before you fell asleep. You don't remember the first half of the story very well but the conclusion is entertaining

[pure-electric]

~an introduction to ecobricking~

hello fellow solarpunks! i've been interested in ecobricking for a while but i recently invested some time into researching them so here's a guide! it's a responsible way to sequester plastic from the environment, but making them is slightly more involved than just stuffing plastic in a bottle, if you want to use them for construction or weight-bearing projects like furniture. I'm mainly using information from GoBrik, which had the most comprehensive guide, but feel free to comment or rb with supplemental information.

FAQ:

Isn't it better to recycle plastic rather than ecobricking?

There are many plastics, such as food wrappers or packaging, that can't be recycled and end up degrading rapidly. Ecobricking sequesters those kinds of plastics from the ecosystem and also reduces the surface area exposed, which limits plastic degredation over time.

How do you use ecobricks?

You can use ecobricks in many applications, from furniture to structures. The long-term environmental impact of using ecobricks is still speculated on, but responsible upkeep mitigates their potential environmental impacts, which are still far less than the impact that plastic would have were it not sequestered.

How To Ecobrick:

Find a plastic bottle. The bottles that you use for ecobricking should all be the same variety, which will help in any building projects that you may choose to use them for.

Find some plastic! Make sure to wash and dry your plastic, as any food residue or moisture could make your brick moldy or structurally unsound. You can cut up larger pieces of plastic, like food packaging (think bags of shredded cheese or frozen berries, or the plastic bags inside cereal boxes)-- just pack em in. If you want to be fancy, GoBrik recommends making the bottom layer of your ecobrick all one color, for aesthetic purposes later on. But it's really up to you. Please avoid putting biodegradable material, such as cardboard or paper, as well as glass or metal, in your ecobrick-- it'll affect the density and preferred composition. Plus, you can recycle those!

Calculate the density! This is the only part that involves math, I swear. You want to aim for a density of about 0.37 grams per milliliter; it shouldn't be under 0.33 g/ml or it'll be structurally unsound. It's also good to aim for a density less than 0.7 g/ml, or your bricks might be too heavy to move comfortably. The equation is just the weight in grams divided by the milliliters of the container you're using, so, for example, if you used a bottle than was 1250 ml, you would be aiming for about 475-500 g of plastic (including the bottle). (a kitchen scale is great for weighing, and you can thrift them pretty easily) Of course, if you're ecobricking to sequester plastic and not necessarily to build, you don't need to worry too much about the density, but if you wanted to donate your ecobricks to a project in the future I would encourage you to try to keep track of density.

Cap your bottle tightly, leaving 1-2 cm at the top of the bottle (basically, you don't want the cap to bulge, because it will make the cap degrade rapidly and crack). Label them with the density of the bottle (if it's relevant) and the date (so you know how long the brick has been around so you can maintain it if needed)-- nail polish works the best. Keep them out of the elements (especially the sun) and off the ground until you plan to use them.

There are tons of ways to use ecobricks! I'll link a few ideas below.

https://ecobricks.org/en/build.php

https://ecobricks.org/en/modules.php

anways, happy bricking! i'll post a picture of my finished ecobrick when it's done (hopefully not soon!)

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecobricks

https://ecobricks.org/en/how.php

[crookedtines]

For some reason I never considered that looms could be small and projects could be accessible ?? How did you get started weaving and what resources did you use?? I saw some of the work you’ve made and I want to get started learning so badly!! Help!

Yess! Weaving is great because of how accessible it can be!! Something I also only recently realized!

I've been enamored with weaving ever since 6 year old me saw an enormous floor loom in action at a textile museum. Despite my fascination with textiles, it still took 20ish years before I picked up weaving as a hobby. Looms were pricy, big, and complicated. It wasn't until I came across bandweaving that it really felt like something I could casually pick up without committing to spending a ton of time and money. I started with tablet weaving, but have since switched to weaving with a heddle. I've been learning by referencing books, looking up weaving process videos, and a lot of trial, error, and experimentation.

Here's a list of resources for two very accessible types of weaving that don't need a loom:

Resources for tablet weaving

Tablets can be bought, but are also easy to make at home from a deck of cards, cereal boxes, recycled plastic, etc. You can find a tutorial for creating your own here.

Tablets at Work by Claudia Wollny An incredibly comprehensive book featuring 22 tablet weaving techniques. The book is written in German and English. Highly recommend for the very enthusiastic.

Card Weaving by Candace Crockett The book that got me started. Easy to follow, informative, and much cheaper and easier to find than Tablets at Work.

Elewys of Finchingefeld A great youtube channel for historic tablet weaving.

Resources for weaving with a heddle

Rigid heddles can be bought or laser cut, and string heddles are created at home out of yarn/string. They are similar, but offer different advantages. Rigid heddles can be simpler to work with, especially if you're working with multiple sheds. String heddles require a few more steps to open the down shed, but don't distort the width of your warp threads. This allows you to weave further down your warp, and makes it easier to keep an even band width.

Here is tutorial for creating your own string heddles.

Norwegian Pick-Up Bandweaving by Heather Torgenrud The book that I learned from! Focuses on pick-up weaving, but is a good introduction to bandweaving in general.

Durham Weaver has a blog and youtube channel. They tend to focus on Scandinavian style weaving, and feature content on weaving with a double slotted heddle, as well as how to set up your warp.

Backstrap Weaving by Laverne Waddington is a blog packed with information about weaving with string heddles. They tend to focus on Latin American style weaving.

A Spinner Weaver is a blog about inkle weaving, though the techniques can be done off of a loom as well. Inkle looms are among the cheaper looms and are designed for bandweaving.

[shirecorn]

I know this is an ask box, so I'll ask a question that's also an awareness: Did you know that the shiny stickers were not getting enough postage?

I don't mind that my post office wants another 46 cents, but it was hilariously confusing to be like, oh man, why did I get charged 46 cents to get shipped a piece of a cereal box?? I found the sticker safely in its baggie after I pulled the piece of Cereal box cardboard out of the envelope. :) thanks for the sticker, it's beautiful!

wuh oh! I wonder why the postage wasn't enough? I weighed every envelope before mailing. I'll ask etsy what went wrong.

I'm trying to offer cheaper postage so people aren't paying $4 for a $1 sticker going forward. Next week I'll troubleshoot and restock! I've got new paper (rainbow!!!) and new designs (black smoke, silver, and rainbow!) and new eyes (ALL COLORS and sparkly diamond!) so I'll want to get this stuff solved before shipping out more.

I know I can buy nice professional cardboard inserts for shipping envelopes, but I like recycling as much as possible, so I make my own. Now you get a sneak peak into my recycling bin, lol. I eat a looot of granola flakes

[pomrania]

Recommendation for anyone who needs something to physically deal with stress: tear up some cardboard. The stuff you get for cereal boxes works well, it has just enough resistance to fool your brain into feeling like it's a fight, but it's easy enough to rip and achieve victory. Tear it to pieces, then tear those pieces into smaller pieces, until what's left is too small to grasp.

Only two problems with this. One, you'll no longer have a usable thing of cardboard left afterwards, which won't actually be a problem if you're taking the thing from the recycle. Two, you'll have a lot of tiny pieces to clean up; you may want to set something down ahead of time to catch them all.

[so-i-grudgingly-joined-this-site]

Here's an unusual custom doll project for me: a Christmas Angel!

Component parts and some fun facts about her under the cut:

Head: Tennis Player Barbie, makeup repainted

Body: 2015 Fairy Godmother Barbie, nails painted

Dress: scrap fabric and rhinestones

Jewelry, halo, and tree-attachment component: armature wire, with tissue paper to puff out the dress

Wings: recycled cereal box cardboard, cut and painted with acrylic paint. The eyes are metallic color-shift paint that changes color based on lighting and angle; this is difficult to capture in photos

Fun fact: her components are mostly the scraps left over from a VERY different doll that's been a few months in the making for me...

It was a challenge for me to make this doll, for a couple of reasons. One was that whoops, I had a time limit so that the family tree would have an angel this year (the old one, which is older than me, had reached the end of her service life this year). As a result I rushed to complete this doll in four days, when dolls usually take me weeks to prepare! I feel her level of detail is impressive for the time constraint.

The other challenge was that my mom insisted it be a CHRISTMAS angel, and not only is Christmas not my usual aesthetic, but I didn't have red, green, or faux fur to go for the easy Christmas aesthetic shortcuts! She approved the purple-blue color scheme as "appropriate enough", and I worked from there, using Disney Princesses and 90s glam Barbie looks as my references.

I really loved getting to paint all those eyes on the wings!

[runawaymarbles]

Hello! I was wondering if you had advice for things that can be DIY'd into bookboards. I started my first fanbinding, but then got stymied after finishing the text block because I don't have anything to use for the boards. I know they sell specialty boards for exactly that, but since it's not going to show anyway, I'd rather used recycled material if possible. Any suggestions?

Hi! So, no it's not going to show, but it is going to affect the stability of your book (and depending on what you're using to cover it--fabric, leather, paper, etc, and how you're planning to decorate it, it'll affect how it behaves.)

That being said you don't have to use the brown davey board. A lot of binders also use a lighter greyboard. There's a bit of a difference between those two in how much leather warps it, I think, but I haven't seen any differences anywhere else. And maybe that was a difference in the leather.

In terms of DIY supplies, it really depends on the size of your book, and, like I said, what you're covering it with. Cereal boxes are pretty good spine material for anything, but they're not going to hold up great on a half letter.

Mainly you want to be looking for thin but dense cardboard--corrugated isn't going to work super well but if you get electronics in a heavier box that might work. The smaller your book the thinner you can get away with making your cover material.

I know @lindstromm had some guides on making books out of recycled things: anyone else have any suggestions?

[hollysmakingstuff]

Egg carton ghost art I made for a friend recently. Isn’t is so cute? I also used cereal boxes and some other recycled materials. 💜🖤🤍

[ryanscabinlife]

Yesterday I collected some wild lupine seeds from the side of the highway and I thought it's the perfect opportunity to prepare for the seed saving season by making seed envelopes 😂😂😂 Not only that I decided to make em, I also filmed it. Needless to say, I WAS HELLA BORED! So if you want to see how I make seed packets from recycled book, you're in luck! I guess this would also be perfect if you want to gift your seeds to family and friends.

i. Step one, find an empty seed packet and carefully open it up.

ii. Find a thin, sturdy, cardboard material. Cereal box would be perfect. Here I'm using sparkling water box. Trace the opened envelope and cut to make a sturdier guide.

iii. Now find a book, newspaper, magazine, or whatever you want to use as a material for your envelope. Using the cardboard guide, outline the part you want to use, make sure to do it on the opposite side so the pen lines won't show. Cut.

iv. Now you basically have an envelope. You just have to fold and glue. You can use regular glue but since I have double sided tape on hand, that's what I used. I just find it a tad bit cleaner.

v. Slap a label sticker on (if you have some) and put in your seeds. Don't forget to label and date.

22-Jul-2023

[foxglenstudio]

Handmade blank notebooks!

I've been making these little 5.5" x 7.5" notebooks lately out of recycled cereal boxes, leftover yarn, printer paper, and cardstock! :) Center bind with a little tail that can be a bookmark/placeholder. All blank inside! Lots of cute floral patterns!

Etsy link <-

[gtzel]

The Boy in the Walls Chapter 1

first next

Have you ever had something mysteriously disappear? Or maybe you noticed small noises in the walls. Or even seen a small form out of the corner of your eye? If so, then you probably have mice or rats and can forget about it. Just ignore any signs of suspicious things going missing. Don't try and find out more, and do not under any circumstances set traps.

...Okay, I'm joking. I obviously do not think it is mice, I do however, believe you should do the ladder options by ignoring it and not bothering with anything related to it. Because if you don't, you will cause unnecessary fear and anguish to some poor being.

I shall elaborate. What I mean is simply this, there are beings that live in our world that are not quite animal, but not human either. These beings reside in the walls of our homes and take out things, freeloading off of what we are unintentionally providing. No, these are not mice, or rats, or whatever exocentric thing you can think of. For these beings are beyond our plebiscite ways of grasping the supernatural.

These beings are known as borrowers. They are sentient, humanoid creatures that are no taller than your pointer finger. And one of these creatures in particular is the protagonist of our story. It's, or rather, his name was Oliver. He, like many other borrowers, grew up knowing and learning to fear the humans or, as they called them hosts.

Oliver had been living at his hosts house for little over a month, having come of age and moved out. but the journey was rough and when he arrived, his host seemed to have no schedule at all. for one thing, they would stay up all night on their computer and still wake up early.

He needed to know when the host would be distracted enough for Oliver to get food. so far it had been about a week since he had borrowed and 3 days since he had last eaten.

Oliver was already a scrawny boy so it didn't help his composure at all.  He was quite pale and skinnier then most borrowers. one day, in the late afternoon, Oliver's host was busy doing something in its room, so he decided to go out borrowing when the human was preoccupied.

he set out to the kitchen with his hook and borrowing bag. Traipsing through the musky, dark, tunnels that he had constructed over his month of living in this new house he made his way to the kitchen. it had taken him most of his time in his new home so far to construct, and mine out those tunnels. plus. the borrower had to remain completely silent whilst doing so, or risk being discovered.

Oliver entered from a chipped tile which he had found upon arriving at his new home, and began heading towards the cereal cabinet. the boy propelled his hook at the cabinet door. his recycled fishing hook flew upwards with great speed, it made a slight thwack. Oliver cringed at the sound but kept going. he climbed up the thin rope, which was quite the task, the cabinet being over 30 feet to him. Oliver heaved himself up into the cabinet cautiously.

the cabinet was a lot larger on the inside then it looked. it was dark, but not uncomfortably so. Oliver inhaled the warm scent of grains. the borrower looked around the expanse of boxes, examining each one carefully. finally he found the one which he had been looking for.

Oliver pulled out his knife and cut into the cereal bag. the thick plastic was hard to cu into at first, but after a few tries, the boy was successful. Once he had grabbed enough food to last him a few days, Oliver began to descend the rope, quite thankful that he had his climbing gloves on. he was about 12 feet from the counter top when the knot holding onto the hook came undone.

have you ever been in a situation so scary and shocking that everything seems o slow down? well that's how Oliver felt. Everything went in slow motion, Oliver began plummeting towards the ground the room spinning around him as he fell. Then all at once Oliver landed in a painful heap, twisting his leg in an awkward position causing him to yelp in pain. despite the pain, Oliver still got up, staggering, and causing his head to spin.  he looked up to his now detached hook, still planted firmly on the cabinets wood.