For some reason, I always seem to lose my focus and motivation in the spring time. Maybe it’s the weather.. spring fever is running rampant and California’s spring sunshine is beckoning. Maybe it’s because I often get sick when the seasons change, and this last cold had me in bed for two full days, which is pretty much unheard of for me.
Anyway, I’ve been trying to get myself back on track with a couple easy silly projects which I will share here.
1. Workstation Reconfiguration
My electronics workstation was cobbled together from bits & bobs and had completely run out of storage. I got some new drawers. I had way too much fun with spray paint and my label maker. Now my workstation is beautiful and organized with extra room for new stuff and ideas.
Before, I couldn’t do any work because my tabletop was too messy. Now, I can’t do any work because my tabletop is TOO CLEAN.

2. Octopus Tentacle Cup
With the brand new beautiful tabletop looking so nice, I needed some new accessories.. mostly a little catch-all trash cup for resistor legs and wire ends and bits of hot glue. I wanted something with style. A few minutes in Tinkercad and a few hours with my 3D Printer and .. check it.

It’s got tentacles. I’m convinced that when I add the correct combination of mishmash to the cup that the tentacles will come alive and suck all my trash down into the Deeps. Here’s the file on Thingiverse if you wanna print one yourself. Really, this photo doesn’t do it justice.
3. Tinkerplay Mermaid Robot
Do y’all know about Tinkerplay? It’s very cool. Tinkerplay is an app wherein you can drag bits and pieces together to create your own superhero robot creature. They have MERMAID PARTS. Naturally I had to make one.
She turned out sort of like a dragonfly mermaid superhero goddess creature. I printed the purple bits in purple, and printed the rest in white and painted it. I love her.


4. New Cinderella Dress
Princess parties continue to consume my weekends, but that just gave me a lovely excuse to go see the new Cinderella movie. And then of course I had to modify an old Cinderella dress to match the new look.

I didn’t go overboard.. left the skirt alone, just replaced the sleeves and added butterflies (with magnets! Rare earth magnets! I’m such a geek). I wore it to a party where all the guests had just been to the movie earlier that morning. They immediately recognized me as the Cinderella from the movie they’d just seen, but complained that my hair wasn’t in a bun and I wasn’t wearing gloves like the “Real” Cinderella. “You mean the cartoon?” I asked. “Well, YEAH, she’s the Real Cinderella, not you,” they replied.
Ah well. It was fun to fix up the dress anyway.
So while it feels like I’ve done nothing of note in the last month or so, I suppose maybe I have. Soon I hope to be back on track coming up with fun new stuff to make. 🙂