Where have I been!??

Holy moly it was been quite a few months!

For those of you that don't follow my Instagram or may not be aware, my city was hit with a biblical type monsoon flood in early February 2019. Biggest flood in history I might add, and it smooshed over 70% of the city.

 

As well as a big ol puddle of water, all the sewerage lines broke so everything was contaminated and super smelly on top of being wet. The sheer weight of the water even cracked out foundation and was left unsanitised for months. By the time my building company agreed that I needed a cleaner, this is ow the cracks looked under the flooring. Completely full of mould, slime and what i can only call as poo goo. Disgusting.

It was a huge job replacing the bottom half of my house, and naturally because there is thousands of houses affected, it took months before contractors could come to work on my house. While I was waiting for repairs, another plague hit my city. Epic amounts of mould. What furniture did survive the flood was now covered in the biggest forest of mould I have seen. All of our remaining furniture was gone after that. Being a severe asthmatic, anything porous like wood or fabric, was thrown out.

Even my dog passed on his blessings as we waited for the council truck to pick up a little of the furniture.

But after a lot of waiting, my house repairs are, finally, almost complete. Replacement furniture was arrived and I have been slowly putting stuff together and trying to take and invent of all the craft items I need to replace. which is pretty much all of it, I might add.

 

Thankfully my feature wall survived for the most part. There was some damage along the bottom and around the window sill, but a small sand and touch up did the trick.

Storm got his pillow corner back. So he was fairly happy to cuddle on the new pillows.

Replacement shelving is in and for the past week I have been organising and storing craft bits and pieces that i managed to save in time. Since I pretty much left it all intact for 5 months, there was a lot to go through.

All in all, this is why I have been absent for months and there is still a little bit to go before I'll be back making miniatures. I have put in a huge order for clay so hopefully that will arrive within the next month.  Once the builders have put on the final touches and I have my order of goods, I should be ready to start up making minis again.

Thanks for reading though all this and I promise I'll be back soon. cya xx

DIY Cardboard Cat house! Update + Apology!

Hey everyone! Where have I been!? I do apologise for suddenly disappearing, however the reason why is an interesting and very lucky story.

I am a part of my local bee keeping group and went for my first visit a few months ago. Never seen a bee hive before so of course they took a liking to my fresh new face and decided to sting me 6 times. Poor girls...

Anyhoo about an hour or so later, I developed vertigo and some mild chest pain which (at first) felt only little more than some bad stomach pain. So I decided to call an Ambulance anyway, just in case I was allergic to bees. Wasn't the case but boy was I lucky anyway.

After multiple blood tests and being hooked up to an ECG machine for 5 hours the doctors diagnosed me with a Pulmonary Embolis. That's a big ol' blood clot in my lungs. For may people...a death sentence and I'm still so very young.

I stayed overnight and as soon as a new doctor came in for his shift I was discharged. Not something that should have happened, but that's another story. So anyway I was monitored by my private doctor intensively for a few weeks while I had regular blood thinner injections in the stomach and multiple xrays of my chest to monitor what was going on. By this stage my breathing deteriorated a little but the blood clot was dissolving. Semi good news!

Unfortunately because of all this business I developed a mild infection and chronic asthma which may be permanent in some capacity. I'm still undergoing treatment so the extent is something to discover at a later date. I was prescribed some heavy immune killing steroids, usually reserved for cancer patients, some antibiotics and several "puffer" style steroids for my lungs.

After several weeks of this I'm walking, talking, breathing and still living. The blood clot is long gone although the cause is still a giant mystery, and I'm starting to talk very well without much breathing difficulty. Although my chronic cough is still around. So I will be picking up my video's shorty =)

On to my latest project! I'm still a little shakey so miniatures are not on the table for the time being. I ordered a new computer (mine was like 8 years old anyway) and it came in a HUGE cardboard box. Which my new kitten tempest adored. So I decided to make a little home for him.

Excuse the mess! I cleaned up all the packaging and tape stuck to the edges and taped down the top flap to be more roof-shaped. Cut out a few holes for a door and some windows and the basic shape was done.

Despite the fact that this will be obliterated by my cats, I decided to decorate it anyway. What would be more fitting than using pages from my local Better Homes and Garden's magazines that I had been collecting for months. God knows why.

I did however run into a few issues. Tempest wanted to help the best he could and would often swipe or slap my hands as I tried to glue down pieces of page to the box.He also took pride in bringing me pieces from my discard pile.

Don't worry I used non-toxic children's glue. Safe to eat! I probably ate a lot of this as a child anyway. As most kids do.

Finally my project was complete! Tempest has a new house to destroy and attack me from as i walk past to the bedroom. He seems to like it.

Of course he needs a few of his favorite toys taped to the sides. I decided not to make this permanent as he carries them around at night and wouldn't be fair to take that from him.

Yeah i would count the box as a success. I sealed the box with a single coat of the non-toxic glue and the box was ready to be kitten tested.

Tempest was a feral which I found during a storm and pulled from a drain. Check out his page for more information!

Hope to see you guys in my next tutorial =)

Halloween cake

Check out this week's miniature tutorial on how to make a tiny 3 tier polymer clay cake in 1:12th scale!



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