New (job and) terrarium

I found myself an exciting new job at my university. I’m now working with my College of Architecture spinning many plates. Mostly PR, e-community management, event planning, web and print graphic design and probably a whole host of other things I’ll run into on the way.

Anyhow, sometime toward the end of last year I picked up this little terrarium. It was cheap, probably only a few quarters, and there was good reason. Whoever got a hold of it before me did a really, really, stupendously terrible job “distressing” (er, stressing) it. It looked like it got caught running with wet paint through an obstacle course of acetone-soaked paper towels. Not to mention it was really dirty and the glass was covered in all sorts of greasy prints.

Even though it isn’t too terribly well made, it still deserved better than that… so of course I dragged it home. I don’t always remember his reactions, but this one I did. When J saw it on the counter he said, “Why is that here? I mean, uhm… yeah, why is that here? Like, why is that in our house?” Regardless, I kept it and finally a few weeks ago I used it as one last crafty house project to round out my super productive week away from work. I sanded it down and removed as much of the dripped paint and bad glazing (or at least I think it was glaze, though honestly it could have just been dirt).

As cool as it looked sanded down, it wasn’t really what I was wanting so I gave it a brand new coat of bright glossy white and to keep the plants from sliding around, I added a square of self-adhesive Contact cork. I thought I might paint the inside a bright orange but I’d have to do it with a brush and I decided I wanted to be done more than I wanted it two-tone.

So now it looks like this:

And here it is in its new home in my new office:

I happened to have my first interview the last day I was off work and decided that if I got the job, I’d probably need to keep this new little greenhouse in my office for luck. Well I got the job so now I’ve got my first new piece of office decor!