Free printable! Laboratory glove boxes

It is so much fun to gather graphics and put them together to make cool minis!

Today I am happy to be able to offer a printable with several glove boxes.  These are actual boxes that I have scanned from real ones we have in our lab (or used to have, because we change brands frequently).  I have cleaned them and scaled them down to 1:12 scale.

There is a piece of a real lab glove peeking out of the boxes

The blue ones we have now; the green one we used to have when we were at the University of Virginia (not included in the printable)

Notice that there are S and M size, and they are available open or closed.

There will be more printables coming as soon as I am finished with them.  There will be a bit a everything, from posters to signs  to packing labels, and of course, supplies boxes - like the brown ones in the shelf, that are of serological pippetes.

As always, please feel free to print as many times as you like, gift them to friends and pass the file along to anyone (links back are nice too!).  Just please do not sell the file or your creations.  Thank you and enjoy! ♥

Update in the Cryocan

 Still waiting for a proper moment to start crafting the Cryocan.

However, today I remembered to bring home a micropipette so I could fill the vials!  That was a very easy thing.  I simply took some bottled water, applied a drop of yellow food dye, stirred and ready!  The vials are ready to be filled.

The "embryo" mix, and the micropipette ready to work

Set to 1 ml or 1000 microliters

I do this at my job all the time :)

Gloriously filled! ♥

It was super fun to do!  Once all the vials were filled, I sticked the labels one by one.

Luckily, the upper ring could be removed, so it was easy to stick the labels without the lower ring interfering.  I tried using a Brady label to see if I could take out the vials from the can.  But even though they are quite thin, the vial did not come out.  So I decided to stick with the font and general appearance of the prop in the movie.

Next step, painting the outside and applying the Barbasol label!  But that will have to wait until the weekend...

A day at the pool, and a Summer job

Well, it's been a busy week, but I am happy.

Last Friday I finally was able to go to the pool for a relaxing day with my mom.  I did not take my tail along, mostly because she said she would be embarrassed to be seen with me while wearing it.  

I was concerned I would end up with sunburns because my skin is so white, so I spent the day using a sun protector factor 50 (no kidding!), and a t-shirt while not in the water.  I tried using it in the water as well but the lifeguard told me I had to remove it, because it was against the law to use clothes in the water and the Health Department could close the pool.  I was tempted to ask if I needed to remove the bathing suit as well, since it is cloth too, but I didn't.  Sometimes I do not understand rules.  I do not know if they would let me use the tail after that.  Good thing I am going to the beach in a couple of weeks...

But since now I am a mermaid, I found a treasure in the pool!  A white pearl.  It was a stud earring actually, just one of those plastic beads with a white cover, so I did not bother to take it to management.  Some days before I had been thinking about those wood boxes they sold at Michael's that were like a treasure chest, and found one just like it by chance at a local dollar-tree store:

So now I am keeping all my "mermaid treasures" on it.  I remember Don Mechanic used to have a tutorial to make this box look like an old pirate chest, but I have not been able to found it.  If you can point me in the right direction I would be grateful.

By the way, while perusing the net I found a great website for people interested in mermaids, the MerNetwork.  It looks like a great community, and they have a lot of interesting sections, such as tail making, tutorials, forums and reviews on tails.  I am not yet a member, but I definitely will.

And this Monday I started a Summer job!  I am working in a lab, as a technician, and I am learning lots of stuff.  It's a lot of work, and I do not have one minute of free time (except for lunch), but I am having a blast, and it is very rewarding to know that my work is anwering science questions.

I hope I can go to the pool again tomorrow with hubby, but we have to stop by the lab in the morning, so there are no plans yet.  Maybe next week...

In the meantime, here is a video of a pretty young mermaid in a pool (not me!).  Enjoy!

Life at High School...again!

It's the end of my first week in high school, and it's more fun than I anticipated sharing classes with a bunch of teens and young adults.
It's easier than I thought to follow the lessons, and the fact is, I'm enjoying myself - I don't know if I will when homework begins to catch up with us...

Fun facts about the HS:
- no toilet paper in the restrooms. Or soap, or towels (not even paper towels), or heaters, or mirrors... I have no idea why (maybe they get stolen?). I guess we are lucky to have waste baskets for sanitary napkins. It's funny though. Now that flu season approaches, how do they expect us to take care of our health? Of course, we have been told already to get our flu vaccinations. The first thing that I tossed in my bag was hand sanitizer. It's going to be a long winter...
- Walls covered with graffiti.
- I have a locker. Yay! First one I got in my life! :)

I think this course is going to be a great way to find myself as a person and to better myself. I am a bit anxious about tests and such, but I hope my old studying habits will kick in and in the end everything will be all right.

The only thing that bothers me a bit is the lack of time to keep writing my novels. I guess I will have to use the recess time...

New Apothecary cabinet

Already up for sale, a new Apothecary cabinet for your miniature setting.
As usual, it includes everything you see in the pic, including a metal microscope and a hand sculpted mortar and pestle imitating granite.
It is available in my shop.

Scientist weekend

Hubby and I are now working long hours in the lab after every body has gone. I help when I can; lately I have been going there 3 hours a day, and I can not sit for a moment because of all the work that there is to do. It is practically impossible to spend all that time between experiments without thinking "How could I do this in miniature?".

To relax tension, I have made this simple but funny vignette:

Yes, in labs there are objects chained to the wall - he said that chained containers are generally made of aluminum, not glass, but I think that seeing green stuff in a glass jar is more fun! It's available in my shop, so go grab it if you like it :)

Spending all this time in the lab has given me new energy to try and make a lab bench in miniature. I'm considering the possibility that most of the stuff that will sit there is too geek-related for the non-scientist to understand (I have made the equivalent of a Kleenex box with wipes for microscope lens - they are called Kim Wipes), so I don't know if it would sell well. We'll see...

Lab Crafting

Yup, I do not only craft miniatures, but scientific crafting too!

My dear husband is so so busy these days that I pop in at the lab when everybody else is gone to keep him company. But I like to help if I can, and this is what I have been doing lately for him to use in his experiments. Bear with me, because this is long...

He taught me how to use this lathe so I could make holes in the bottom of little Petri dishes.

Dish before the process. The part on the left is the cover.

You secure the dish in the lathe:

And using the blade of the right (and much caution) you make a hole:

Dish after the cutting

When you have made holes in 20-25 dishes, you clean them up, scratching the rests of the plastic that have not come out. If you skip this step, cells get poisoned by the scraps and then they die :(

When you have finished cleaning them, you line them up in the table and take out 30mm round glass microscope covers. You can see them inside the big round dish:

These covers have been previously treated - you clean them 10 minutes under distilled running water, and leave them inside sulfuric acid overnight. The following day you clean them again under distilled running water and put them in a stove to dry overnight. You take the glue and put a circle on the bottom of the dish:


Then you take a glass cover and stick it to the glue:


You have to squeeze out the air bubbles:

And then you put them under an UV light for one hour on each side to cure the glue. Then there is no way the glue breaks or falls. Yup, the same UV that gives you a tan in a tanning saloon (and because I know how UV lights work, you will never see me in a tanning saloon).

Whew! What a work! Good thing is, doing this saves a lot of money for the lab. A ready made Petri dish with glass bottom costs around $10 - yes, research is expensive-. And this is a nice way to lower the costs.

Oh my, what a nerd I am :)