Trash to Treasure 1

Don't think that I told you that my children bought me a new computer for Christmas. It's lovely but it involves the Cloud and such...don't understand  all that. Having said that, I can't find the first pictures that I took for T2T. Will retake them and try to post them tomorrow.

For now, I'll show you the 2nd brainstorm I had.

#7 on the list is a small box (no longer than 3")

For this, I chose a plastic box that once contained a Reutter miniature. The plastic box with a black base.

So here is the clear box upside down.

Originally, I thought I would use part of my foamcore allocation for the bottom 'gravel'. So I measured it to fit the bottom, peeled off the paper on one side and trimmed the foam down.

Then (great moment here), remembered the sandpaper on the list. Much better pebbly surface for aquarium gravel! And the colour is good.

In my (humungous) stash of beads, I have these fish beads and a conch shell.

I glue the sandpaper to the bottom of the box and place the conch shell on it.

I would rather have used a bit of plastic fern but it's not on the list so I take a green pipe cleaner and cut off some short pieces and trim off most of the chenille.

And glue it in the corner of the aquarium.

Then I take my Krylon gold-leafing pen and colour all my fish.

I added one arm to the plant and put one fish in there.

In the meantime I take one large paper clip (can't remember what it's called) and glue it to the bottom of the box and (using Lego pieces and clamps) glue it in right angles to form the first leg..

Here I've added the 4th arm to the greenery. put a fish in there and added about 3/16" of Dollarama's Craft clear glue.

As you can see above (and below), the bead hole is SO evident in the fish bead.

So I trimmed down a toothpick and inserted it through the hole.

Then clipped it off with this sprue cutter which cuts things flat to the surface.

The paper clip was glued properly to the lid of the box so I added another layer of glue to ensure it would stay in place.

Repeated the process for the other table leg....and here it is!

The glue in the aquarium is taking days more to dry than I had expected.  The first fish that I had put in didn't work...but that was okay since I hadn't filled the bead hole.

After two days, I could add the fish in front of the greenery and another layer of glue.

I think at the rate the glue is drying, this will take well over a week to complete. But so far I'm enjoying it.