jellyfish made out of PET bottles + gabriel gastelum's photography

I love jellyfish to the point where I’ve considered getting one as a pet. unfortunately, pet jellyfish are notoriously difficult to care for. another option are these fake LED pet jellyfish tanks. even if I was feeling impulsive enough to drop $170 on LED jellyfish I wouldn’t be able to because they’re sold out. a more realistic option would be to make some of my own like miwa koizumi’s PET bottle jellyfish designs. time to buy a heat gun.

and to the right is a fantastic self portrait by photographer gabriel gastelum. found on flickr.

bumblesea style crush: luxenoir DIY sharpie chanel logo shirt

bumblesea style crush: luxenoir DIY fashion sharpie coco chanel logo tshirt

best DIY find ever: luxenoir’s DIY sharpie chanel logo shirt – with holes eating up the fabric on bottom of the tshirt. perfect. this girl is cute as hell too.

unfortunately, from experience, I know that sharpie on fabric gets messy and smudges everywhere after you wash it. and I’m not sure about my willingness to sport the chanel logo. but it’s inspiring enough to make me break out my black water based acrylic paints and play with some of my old clothes. this is how bumblesea started, after all. though I’ll never sell handmade shirts again, there’s no reason why I can’t make a few of my own.

more chanel hilarity: veronica from say hello to fashion made a quickie DIY tote that says “I really (don’t) need a CC bag!”

I think I’ll just stick to keeping my zen garden on my desk for now. but every once in a while I like to peruse flickr for the most interesting photos of ecospheres, to think about what could have been. I’m so happy flickr has finally updated their search function, the previous search didn’t load any images for me half the time. oh, and I have a secret weapon against the spaceball.gif photos I despise so much. I’ll let you in on my little secret in due time.

bumblesea DIY ecosphere - "pet algae" photo by digital existence via flickr

The lake gunk Jennifer scooped out with some plastic pretzel buckets didn’t seem very promising at first for ecosphere material, but after allowing them to settle, there were indeed some little fishies and snails! Ecosphere success.

Coincidentally, I came across these cool little Domsai encased cactus pots by Matteo Cibic on the web after our ecosphere excursion. Not quite ecospheres, but definitely somewhat related. I want to put these in my bathroom or kitchen!!

domsai matteo cibic cactus planters via cubeme

domsai matteo cibic cactus pots via cubeme

domsai matteo cibic lightbulb planter via cubeme

bumblesea DIY twine and lace headband

behold, my first DIY creation I’ll use every day. I only had one fabric headband and it was falling apart because I wear it nearly every day. I was looking for some DIY projects for jean and I to work on and I found this tutorial on cucumbersome, via heart of light.

it was an extremely simple and quick project, I think jean and I managed to make five in about an hour. all we did was braid random strips of fabric, twine, and lace together and sew the ends so they wouldn’t fall apart. the great thing about these is that you don’t need to cut the fabric in a perfectly straight strips, mine were horribly deformed but since you braid the strips you can’t really tell.

go make some! and please ignore my greaseball hair in the photo of me. I’m going to take a shower right now, I swear.

bumblesea DIY twine and lace headbands

bumblesea DIY twine and fabric headbands

tshirt DIY long necklace via bumblesea

1. Find some old t-shirts you don’t mind cutting up.
2. Cut strips at whatever thickness you desire across the t-shirt so that you end up with loops. My strips were roughly half an inch wide.
3. Pull on the loops so that the fabric sort of curls and lengthens. Don’t pull too hard; you might rip the seams apart and lose your loop.
4. Gather loops.
5. Save one loop or just cut another one to wrap around the gathered loops. You can just tuck one end into the wrap.
6. Voila!

tshirt DIY necklace via bumblesea

tshirt DIY bracelet and necklace via bumblesea

For the bracelets, you can just cut loops out of the sleeves as opposed to the body of the t-shirt so that they’re smaller, more wrist-sized.

DIY lampshade

I have this awful habit of buying great vintage lamp bases and putting them in a closet because I can’t find any decent lampshades. I needed a quick project to work on with jean and I was looking at a few DIY projects about heating/shrinking plastic bags to make various objects. most of the items happen to be bags for some reason. I have too many purses already, and I’m not going to add to the collection unless it’s another ultra soft leather handbag. I knew I wanted to try melting some plastic bags and I also need some lampshades, you’ve got chocolate on my peanut butter, etc.

all you need for this project is plastic bags (use colorful bags if you want to avoid a dull greyish result), wax paper, something to fasten the lampshade together (glue, staples, or thread) and an iron. I live in squalor and don’t own an iron so I used a hot pan. having an iron will give you an advantage, many f-bombs were dropped during the reheating of my pan, jean can attest for this.

put wax paper down on a hard surface that can stand some considerable heat, layer a few plastic bags on top, and cover with another sheet of wax paper. according to this instructable you need to heat the bags up to about 110°F or 7/10 on their iron setting. the result is a thin but sturdy sheet of plastic. I burnt my bags so there are holes in the resulting plastic, but jean tried to make me feel better by telling me that a lampshade with some holes in it would be pretty sweet. turns out she’s right.

melted plastic bags

the lamp I decided to use for this project is quite small so I was able to simply staple the plastic together to form a cylander. the resulting lampshade was a bit bland so I glued a layer of pink lace over it. you could even hang some crystals from the bottom if you’d like, but I think I’m happy with my lamp shade just as it is.