stand stickers

It's burning hot out, y'all. Today it was 103 and yet my band still met up and played, but even I was flagging by 3 PM. Been sorta swamped by band junk lately...

The tiniest little thing I've been enjoying lately is populating my music stand with stickers. My bandmate brought us all stickers from Muscle Schoals (the "Muscle Schoals sound" is a thing!) and I said, "Oh, I'll put it on my music stand!" And since I slapped on that one, I've been slowly adding to the conglomeration, as I find worthy stickers either in my long-held stash or in stores.

I have a warm color scheme going -- although, composing this post just now and looking at my blog's colors, I went, "Hmm. Okay. I matched my music stand to my blog."

The "girly pop" sticker I found at Five Below (it was $2) but the others are just from my stash, such as the Pompompurin one. The triple flower one I bought from Etsy years back, but I tried to find the shop to link here, and it's closed down.

But speaking of Etsy, because I'm extra, and why not, I got some custom lo-lite stickers!!! ("lo-lite" being what I am calling my lofi bedroom covers project. I'm sure you remember!)

I got the stickers from HomeGiftsTX on Etsy. I just found them while doing a general search for vinyl stickers on Etsy, and the design immediately called out to me. I got 3-inch ones, which are a bit smaller than I expected. But I love 'em! Any bigger might have felt like a bumper sticker. The vintage style is super cute and vibey and I like the color variations offered.

I'm sure no one here is in need of a music stand review. However: The stand pictured is one I got off Amazon and I really like it. It's super sturdy. It has a little attachment you can use to make it into a table-top stand, which I've used a few times and have found to be handy. I actually use it as a camera tripod as well, because the small cameras I use to record band videos have magnets on the back, and they stick right to the stands and since the stands are sturdy, they make a good base.

OH! I also added stickers to my Omnichord's power adapters, of which I have three total, but I added stickers to the two that are 6-foot. (I use the 4-foot one less.) These make them very easy to tell apart from other adapters/power supplies. This is important because the Omnichord requires a negative polarity adapter. If you plug in the wrong kind you could just kill your Omnichord. So it's really important for me to be able to visually separate my particular adapter from other adapters that litter our band room floor.

What better than a sticker of Badtz-Maru slapping his own butt?

Anyway, this is suuuch a small thing. It feels very silly to blog about. I don't really even have proper blog tags for something like this. But I mostly just have small things keeping me going right now.

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deliver me from evil

Talking about this has been in the back of my mind for some time now! I don't mean this in an "anti-haul" or anti-consumeristic way, although I suppose that's part of my feeling on it... But, being interested in cute stuff and knick-knacks and the like, the internet hawks me these things all the time. And I refuse. I REFUSE!!!! To even START! To even CONSIDER! Collecting anything else!

... That's a straight-up lie. I face constant temptation in the forms of these little kawaii little hunks of plastic.

But, thus far I remain strong!!!

SANRIO ANYTHING

Here's the thing. I love Sanrio!!! I collected it as a child, in the late 80s/early 90s, before Hello Kitty was as ubiquitous as she is now! I've loved it all my life. As a child my mother would reward us after a difficult experience such as the dentist by taking us to the mall, where there was a gift shop that had a Sanrio shelf. She would let us pick out an item, and my sister and I had an impressive combined Sanrio collection. I'd really love to post about some of the items we had sometime!

In high school (this was in the late 90s for me) I still collected! But I mostly loved stationery items, which I actually used a lot, so I don't have most of it now. I do actually still have a few Landry things from ~1998. Landry's not super popular. But I had a lot of Chococat and Badtz-Maru stuff! To this day I have an appreciation for Sanrio characters other than Hello Kitty. My favorites continue to be Badtz-Maru, Chococat, Landry, Keroppi, Marron Cream, and Little Twin Stars.

I wish I had endless money to dump towards cute Sanrio blind boxes and the like, and the space to display little figurines. But I simply don't, so I only allow myself to enjoy pictures of other people's Sanrio collections!

(But in the interest of honesty, amidst all these other things, Sanrio is what I have the most emotional connection to, so it's a case of "I would if I could!")

SYLVANIAN FAMILIES

Just super duper cute. So cottagecore. So kidcore. What would be the harm in attaining just one? Or one little family...? I do wonder...

POPMART FIGURES

These anger me so much because I like them so much. I'm talking about the Skullpanda Warmth Series specifically, because these muted/cool pastel colors are so BEAUTIFUL to me! But I like a few other Skullpanda figurines too. I've looked these up on eBay and Etsy in moments of extreme weakness. But I've never pulled the trigger. I ask, "Will this really make me happy?" It's like I have an itch in my brain that I feel like I can soothe with one of these. But I'm sure it'd make absolutely no difference in my overall wellbeing, so this gives me the strength to close the tab whenever I find myself tempted!

SONNY ANGELS

These also make me want to derisively curse. I love 'em. I hate 'em. I love 'em. I know these are extremely extremely trendy, which means that -- sort of like Funko Pops, in my opinion -- they're going to strike everyone as a very dated and irritating thing to have a whole mess of in the future. (Of course, I don't believe in letting something stop you from enjoying what you sincerely enjoy. Sonny Angels and Funko Pops make a lot of people really happy and I love that!) But thinking of them this way helps me not give into the temptation to start collecting these dust-catchers. Even though they're so cute in a little display case that I could scream.

Of course, I am not beyond my little collections! Here's what I do collect/what I am allowing myself to have:

TAMAGOTCHIS

I have six Tamagotchis and have built up my collection slowly over many years now! (I first/last posted about Tamagotchis in 2015, almost ten years ago now.) 90s nostalgia is of course all well and good, but I love the more modern Japanese Tamagotchis that have color screens and minigames! I have the iDL (still my favorite), the P's, the 4U, and the Meets. I would love love LOVE to expand this collection! But it's a cyclical phase type thing for me. I'll get really into running a Tamagotchi for a while and then I won't be in the mood to do the constant maintenance aspect of it again for a while.

Tamagotchis have long-running characters such as Memetchi and Kuchipatchi. The fact that there's specific characters adds an appeal factor that's not unlike Sanrio for me. They also often have Sanrio-themed Tamagotchis (or pierces, in the case of the P's).

Also, people make cute crocheted Tamagotchi cases, and this is SO up my alley!

THESE SPECIFIC STITCH FIGURINES

Stitch is, unfortunately, what the kids call my "comfort character." (I sorta got a douche chill just saying that, though.) In other words, he's a long-term favorite of mine, and I have a big emotional attachment to him. I have a stuffed Stitch that I sleep with and a couple of other little Stitch stuffies. I am always having to talk myself out of buying Stitch plushies. This is kind of a humiliating thing to admit, haha.

But, look at that little trio I have! I think this is a great way for me to indulge my bizarre autistic Stitch love without having Stitch stuff out the wazoo. There are four more little figures in this particular series and I would really like to have them all eventually, but I'm not focused on attaining them.

I also really love these because I got a couple of them from my little sister for Christmas. She knows me so well!

TAROT DECKS

I used to study tarot back in 2015/2016, before I had a huge mental health crisis and stopped being able to engage with all of my many hobbies. I have yet to pick up my studies again in anything longer than small spurts but I retain an interest, and every now and then, I am gifted a new tarot deck (most of the decks I have were gifts). I have ten decks total.

LITTENS

I got all my Littens in one fell swoop, as you know!!! Here are pictured just the figurines as they sit on my shelf. But you know I have a little gaggle of plushies. A litany of Littens. And I love them so freaking much. I would absolutely accept more Littens into my heart/my bedroom.

OTHER COLLECTIONS I HAVE BUT DID NOT MENTION HERE (BESIDES BLYTHES OBVIOUSLY):

• Animal Crossing Amiibos/Amiibo cards
• a huge hunk of the Sweet Valley Twins series, which I at one time was actively collecting (I posted about them here)
• BL Metamorphosis, the one manga series I have actively collected (it's only five books)

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