This tiny Pomeranian dog has been left without a nose - following a cancer battle
Image by: Simon Galloway
This tiny Pomeranian dog has been left without a nose - after surviving a gruelling cancer battle.
Poa - is now known as 'Poa No Nose' by her owners and has her own instagram account @poanonose - after veterinary surgeons removed the upper part of her snout to fight off a fast-growing cancer.
13-year-old Poa, who is three quarters Pomeranian and one quarter American Eskimo, was taken to five different vets before they took the drastic measure to save her life.
Owner Anna Prosser, a producer and host from Seattle, Washington, USA, said: "The vet reminded me that Poa didn’t look in mirrors.
"They said as long as she could get snuggles and treats, she would heal and be perfectly happy.
"Even when she was at her sickest, Poa made it clear that she had no intention of giving up so, given that option, I knew it was the right choice."
Poa had surgery in August, three months after the cancer was diagnosed, and wore a head cone while she recouperated.
Anna said: "On some of the most terrible days, Poa sneezed blood, refused to eat, and was agitated all through the night.
"On good days, she slurped wet dog food and didn’t hide any of her medicine in her doggy bed.
"It was some of the hardest work I have ever done in my life, but little by little, day by day, she became stronger, until today she seems even happier and healthier than she was before."
Image by: Simon Galloway
Image by: Anna Prosser
Image by: Anna Prosser
Image by: Anna Prosser
Poa even managed to grow a full coat of hair despite struggling with Alopecia X most of her life.
Now, even at 13, she still loves to play and walk, and especially snuggle and give kisses.
Anna said: "The first thing people ask are “can she eat?” and “does her tongue stay moist?” The answer to both of those questions is 'yes'!
"At very first, especially when she was fresh out of surgery and very was jarring to look at. Some people saw Poa and reacted with anger toward me.
"They felt like any dog who looked like her must be suffering, and that I, as her owner, should have made the call to put her to sleep instead of making her endure the aftermath of surgery.
"However, the more they see her happily going about her day to day as a basically normal dog with no nose but plenty of personality, they begin to see her for what she is.
"It is a reminder that even the smallest of us can be very strong. Even the most scarred of us can be beautiful, and that love really can survive anything."
She added: "I have been overwhelmed by how many people feel encouraged by her and express love for her.
"She was a very cute dog before, but now that she’s different, and her face tells a story of survival and hope, people seem to connect to her in a whole new way.
"Messages about her strength giving others hope mean the world. We try to return the favour by posting pictures that make people feel happy, and captions that remind people that they are beautiful and worthy of love, just the way they are."
Pictures are now shared on her instagram account @poanonose.
Ms Prosser added: "These have been some of the happiest times of our life together as companions.
"She’s been there for me though so many of life’s hardest times, and I feel so happy and proud to have been able to return the favour for my little bestie."
Video by: Anna Prosser
Adorable pair of cats suffer from rare condition Cerebellar Hypoplasia - which causes them to constantly WOBBLE
Image by: Emily Horner
Meet Pablo and Bones - two cats that suffer from a rare condition which causes them to constantly WOBBLE.
Cerebellar Hypoplasia is an incurable disease caused by an underdeveloped cerebellum - a part of the brain which controls movement.
Symptoms can range from mild to severe - causing them to stumble and stutter as they navigate through day-to-day activities such as walking, eating, and jumping.
Despite the odds, owner Emily Horner, 26, says the pair are still able to do everything else a 'normal' cat can - just with a bit more fumbling about.
She said: "My boys are classified as mild, they can do almost everything other cats can.
"They run around, play together and shred my sofa to pieces, just like any cat, there's just more falling over involved.
"Bones [grey] is the boss of the two, he's very vocal. Pablo [ginger] is the baby of the two, he's a bit more timid but loves being brushed and fussed over. Both are massive foodies."
According to research - Cerebellar Hypoplasia develops when a mother is severely malnourished during the pregnancy phase.
Although it is a mild form of the disease - Emily says she must still keep a watchful eye on the pair to avoid any accidents.
"I do have to be more careful of things that can present a danger to them"
"We have carpeted stairs and CH (Cerebellar Hypoplasia) cats are excellent climbers so they've managed to manoeuvre those with a bit of practice."
Emily, who works in Customers operations in Bristol, adopted the adorable duo a month ago.
Image by: Emily Horner
Image by: Emily Horner
Image by: Emily Horner
The charity, World Animal Friends, specialise in re-homing special needs animals.
Pablo and Bones were being fostered and believed to have been strays at the time.
"The first few nights at hers they slept on the cold floors at her house, they had to learn that sofas were comfy etc"
"They are also scared of people walking around in shoes and seem to eat like they don't know when their next meal is coming."
Emily describes being "instantly sold" after their foster owner sent a picture of them.
"I was actually in contact with the charity about adopting a different cat, but the lady I was speaking to asked if instead of one, if I would consider two, she sent me a picture of the two of them and I was immediately sold".
Emily later created an Instagram account to give her friends a break from the bombardment of pictures she would send of them.
She also discovered communities who had pets living with the same condition.
"People love seeing what my boys get up to and how they navigate the world."
"I found out about CH cats through a page called orangeandblackisthenewtan. They helped to educate me on CH and it leads to me adopting two disabled boys."
"I'm hoping to also show people that disabled animals are in just as much need for a loving home, and just because they are disabled, it doesn't mean they can't have a long happy life with you."
You can watch Emily document Pablo & Bones' wobbly adventures on their Instagram @pablo.and.bones.
Video by: Emily Horner
Thoughtful neighbour has created a parking spot for an NHS nurse who is working on the front-line of the battle against coronavirus
Image by: Steve Chatterley
A thoughtful neighbour has created a parking spot for an NHS nurse who is working on the frontline of the battle against coronavirus.
The space was marked out in white spray paint directly outside the health worker's house so she does not have to search for a gap when returning from long shifts.
The nurse, who does not want to be named, is working in a hospital to treat patients with coronavirus in Greater Manchester.
A sign put up by the neighbour next to the spot read: “SPACE RESERVED. Polite notice. Please respect the sign and give our NHS workers a change. Thanks.”
The nurse's husband, who also does not wish to be named, first saw the paint after his wife had gone to work on Saturday morning (28 March) and said she was “incredibly touched” by the small act of kindness.
He said she often has to park further away from her home when she gets back from her work at the hospital.
Image by: Steve Chatterley
He posted on Facebook: “What absolutely gorgeous caring neighbours who have done this for her. Such a caring touch.
“She was emotional when the street clapped for the NHS in the week, this will do her in! Let's keep supporting our nurses and NHS.”
Critical staff are starting to be tested today (Mon) to see whether they have coronavirus, with tests for A&E staff, paramedics and GPs set to follow.
Last week more than 20,000 former NHS staff applied to return to the health service to join the fight against Covid-19.
Yesterday (Sun) Prime Minister Boris Johnson also thanked 750,000 volunteers who had put their names down to support doctors and nurses however they can.
On Saturday NHS consultant Amged El-Hawrani, 55, was the first hospital frontline worker to die after testing positive for the virus.
Meet the orangutan who decided to take an outdoor vacation in -7°C
Image by: Jake Kubie
A canny orangutan was not going to let a little freezing weather stop him enjoying a ten day treetop holiday - and even took his own blanket to keep him toasty.
Wild orangutans, which hail from the steamy continent of Asia, never encounter cold weather.
Captive orangutans in breeding programmes around the world tuck up inside their zoo enclosures to wait out the winter months.
But 12-year-old Sumatran orangutan Jaya had different plans and braved the perishing cold in the freezing winter of Denver, Colorado, with his trusty blanket.
Jaya threw caring zookeepers of Denver Zoo into a panic when he left the comfort of his indoor retreat and took a 10-day holiday up a tree - in JANUARY.
Zookeeper Cindy Cossaboon said: “We don't know what spooked him, but he retreated into the yard, climbed up a tree and refused to come back inside.
Denver winters can be perishingly cold, so zoo staff rallied to try and coax Jaya back inside.
Cindy, 43, added: “They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. It’s normally much the same with apes.
“We tried a lot of novel foods with him. He loves dried fruit nuts and juices but nothing was working. He just wouldn’t come down.
“Jaya’s favorite thing is whipped cream. We give him that occasionally for an extra special treat, but even that didn’t persuade him.
“We had two big doors that were left open for him at all times, but he simply refused to come back inside.”
The zookeepers were concerned that Jaya would get frostbite, so they monitored him around the clock to keep him safe.
Image by: Jake Kubie
Image by: Jake Kubie
Image by: Jake Kubie
Cindy added: “We set up a giant heater out there and gave him bedding and hay and sleeping bags and comforters and tarps, everything we could think of to keep him warm.
“We sent up warm drinks and warm foods and the night keepers checked on him throughout the night, every night.
“It’s like having a kid. The animals feel like family and we care about them very much. When he was outside it was probably harder on us than it was on him.
“I wasn’t sleeping. We were all so worried about him. I kept checking with the night keepers every night, asking, ‘how’s Jaya doing?’
“We were lucky because it was quite mild this year, fortunately it was in the 40s in the day (4.5 Celsius) but there were a couple of nights when it got down to 20 (-7 Celsius)
“On those colder nights I didn’t sleep at all. We like to joke that we’re their mothers, their nurses, their restaurants and their house maids. Working with orangutans is about building relationships.
“Everything is about clear, honest and consistent communication. We treat them with respect and give them choices.
"You can’t force them to do anything. We work for them and it’s a real privilege for us.”
Jaya finally decided to end the outdoor experience after 10 days and vacated his treetop home and loped back into the warm.
Cindy added: “We were so relieved. It was a rough couple of weeks.”
Jaya is now happily settled at the zoo and has formed a firm friendship with a female orangutan called Eirina of the same age.
Cindy said: “Eirina absolutely loves him, she follows him everywhere. They play together all day. They like to hang by their feet upside down and wrestle.
“We’re hoping that in the future it’ll become a romantic relationship, but they are too young to breed effectively at the moment.
“When orangutans have children too young they don’t become the best parents, so the recommendation is that they don’t have their first baby until they are 15-years-old.
“But we really hope that in a few years we’ll have some babies to celebrate.”
Video by: Ashley Moran
These amazing photographs show how an ingenious bird has built a cosy nest for its chicks - inside a set of city centre traffic lights
Image by: Dan Rowlands SWNS
These amazing photographs show how an ingenious bird has built a cosy nest for its chicks - inside a set of city centre traffic lights.
An industrious mistle thrush piled up a cluster of leaves and twigs on a visor below the middle amber light at the top of a metal post.
It was built in Leeds, West Yorks, and is home to five young chicks.
It's thought the unusual spot was chosen by the bird because of the warmth given off from the light, as chicks need supplementary warmth until they are fully feathered.
Image by: Dan Rowlands SWNS
Image by: Dan Rowlands SWNS
Image by: Dan Rowlands SWNS
Dozens of passersby and motorists have been spotted inspecting the nest, which sits at the centre of a busy junction close to Leeds Beckett university.
The mistle thrush is a large songbird with pale grey-brown upper parts, a greyish-white chin and throat, and black spots on its pale yellow and off-white under parts.
Generally found if wood and parkland, the creature feeds on a variety of invertebrates, seeds and berries.
Their favoured food is mistletoe fruit, which is reflected in its name.
Mistle thrush's incubate their eggs for around two weeks, which is when chicks are usually mature enough to fledge.
Video by: Gabriella Petty
PIPING A HERO - Former Labour advisor Alastair Campbell serenades dedicated NHS nurse on bagpipes as she returns home from gruelling hospital shift.
Image by: Jon Mills
Former Labour advisor Alastair Campbell serenaded a hero nurse home on the bagpipes after she finished a gruelling shift on a busy hospital ward.
Matilda 'Sissy' Bridge battled leukaemia from the age of two-and-a-half and joined the NHS to work with those who helped her beat the cancer and care for others.
Sissy, 27, now works as a nurse on the asthma ward at Whittington Hospital, Upper Holloway, London.
She and Campbell's comedian daughter Grace, 25, have been neighbours and friends since birth.
Image by: Jon Mills
Accomplished piper Alastair said: "Sissy and grace are great friends. Sissy had childhood leukaemia and was hospitalised for quite a while. That is part of the reason she became a nurse.
"It was an honour to march a heroine home from the front line - well done Sissy.
"And we did a nice hymn for the whole street who came out to thank Sissy and all who work in our wonderful NHS.
"We were also serenading Sissy's loving family, mum Victoria and older sister Florence, who worry about her every minute of every day.
"#clapforNHS. And, of course, the wonderful @RoyalFreeNHS."
Alastair, inspired by Sissy's childhood cancer battle, ran the marathon for Bloodwise charity in her honour.
He said: "I ran the marathon for leukaemia research in 2003 and her family donated £50k. I raised over £1million in the end."
Video by: Ellis Wylam
An arcade owner has put toilet roll, soap and hand sanitiser as prizes - in GRABBER machines
Image by: Adam Harnett
An arcade owner has put toilet roll, soap and hand sanitiser as prizes - in GRABBER machines.
Rob Braddick, 48, owns Ho Barts Amusement Arcade and noticed that stocks of toilet roll were running low in his local supermarket.
He then decided to buy as many as he could, and used his stock to replace the toys and teddy bears in his grabbing machines.
Rob said that there were still products available to buy in his area, but hoped that people would flock to his amusement arcade in Westward Ho!, Devon, when they got desperate.
Image by: Adam Harnett
Image by: Adam Harnett
Image by: Adam Harnett
Rob said: "We evicted the character from Frozen and the Peter Rabbit teddy bears and replaced them with hand sanitiser and toilet rolls.
"We also have a large machine that used to have a Spider Man doll, but now there is a large Curex soap in there - that's the Rolls-Royce of hand sanitisers.
"We test it, it's possible to win them but it is hard. We've lad people coming in to have a go but I don't think anyone has won yet.
"It's been a bit quiet so far but I think people will start coming in to have a look.
"There are still some toilet rolls on the shelves around here so I guess people aren't that desperate yet."
Rob also owns the nearby Braddick Holiday Centre, which employs around 100 people.
He said that they are taking the coronavirus scare very seriously, and have implemented a strict hand-washing policy for staff.
Rob continued: "We have a lot of staff at the holiday centre and the arcade, and we've put in measures where people have to wash their hands every half hour.
"So far the effect of the outbreak is unclear, we're still getting people ringing up and booking holidays - but it's early days and things could get worse."
Baker creates a LIFE-SIZED Karl Lagerfeld cake to mark the one-year anniversary of his death
Image by: Matthew Newby SWNS
A British baker has created a LIFE-SIZED cake of German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld to mark the one year anniversary of his death.
Confectionary artist Debbie Wingham, 38, used 195 eggs, 44lbs of sugar paste, 13 bags of flour and over 15,000 baby marshmallows to create the edible sculpture - which stands at 5'10 tall and weighs 287 pounds.
"I made it with all the vital statistics of the late, great Karl Lagerfeld," said Wingham, who spent 11 days building the creation for an unnamed German businesswoman.
“The person who commissioned it shares my passion for this legend in couture,” added Wingham.
The cake was even made to taste like the late Karl's favorite food, toasted corn bread.
"It is a sweet corn bread cake with honey salted butter frosting," said Wingham.
The sugary model depicts Lagerfeld in his signature black sunglasses, monochromatic
suit, fingerless gloves, and starched, detachable collar.
“Every detail in this cake embodies King Karl,” said Wingham who sculpted the legs from rice crispy treats, bonded with butter and marshmallows.
Image by: Matthew Newby SWNS
Image by: Matthew Newby SWNS
Image by: Matthew Newby SWNS
The facial likeness of the former Chanel honcho was achieved with the help of Israeli sculptor Mike Viner, who traditionally works in clay, but turned his hand to modeling chocolate on Wingham’s request.
“Working in modeling chocolate is a little different from what I’m used to, and I was somewhat worried when I accepted the challenge,” said Viner.
Adding: “But the result of both mine and Debbie’s sculpting skills together are the perfect combination.”
Wingham is hailed as one of the top sugar artists in the world, with clients including Drake, Tim Burton and Justin Bieber.
In 2018 she famously made a “cake-a-like of Kim Kardashian.
“
Sculpting Kim Kardashian’s curves in cake was no easy job,” she said.
“But making Karl was even more difficult.
“I have always had much admiration for Karl and every job I do is always important to me, but to date this cake was definitely my most important edible creation.
"I hope Karl would have approved.”
Karl Lagerfeld died in Paris, France on 19 February 2019 at the age of 85 after a battle with cancer.
Video by: Ashley Moran
GARDEN HORROR - A dad-of-two almost died after catching a rare flesh eating bug when he cut his hand GARDENING
Image by: Steve Palmer
A dad-of-two almost died after catching a rare flesh eating bug when he cut his hand GARDENING.
Steve Palmer, 34, nicked the middle finger on his right hand while clearing debris which had swept into his garden from a river during the recent floods.
He thought nothing of it until the next morning when his finger appeared red and swollen.
Steve went to work with his father-in-law but was stunned when his hand ballooned in size and his arm had turned black.
He was rushed to hospital where doctors diagnosed him with necrotising fasciitis, a potentially fatal flesh-eating bacteria.
Image by: Steve Palmer
Image by: Steve Palmer
Image by: Steve Palmer
He was transferred to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham where surgeons operated to remove the dead and infected tissue from his arm.
A plastic surgeon was able to save his arm from being amputated and Steve is expected to take a year before making a full recovery.
Steve, who worked as an air conditioning engineer, has posted graphic pictures of his blackened arm on Facebook in a bid to warn others.
He said: “It was terrifying, it was like something from a horror movie. I could literally see my entire arm turning black.
“When the surgeon looked at my hand all the blood vessels in my knuckles had turned to mush.
“I just want to warn people to be careful and to wear gloves while gardening, particularly now that people will probably be spending more time in their gardens due to the coronavirus lockdown."
Steve was gardening with his wife Laura, 34, at their home in Polesworth, Warks., on March 7 when he cut his finger.
He said: "Me and my wife were in the garden tidying up.
“We live on the back of the River Anker which had flooded a couple of weeks earlier and messed the garden up a bit.
“We’d waited for the weather to get better so we could clean up.
"While I was clearing reeds which had been swept into the garden from the river I got a
little nick on my finger.
“I didn’t even notice it, I get little cuts all the time at work and just cracked on but there must have been all sorts of bacteria from the floods which got into the cut.
"The next morning I was meant to help my father-in-law do some cementing at his farm but when I looked at my middle finger it had swelled up and was red.
“I felt a bit soft for saying I couldn’t help him but went round anyway and played with the kids and on the piano but I could hardly move my finger.
“I said to Laura 'that starting to look a bit infected'.
"When I got home my knuckles were swollen and the infection had started to spread up my arm."
Image by: Steve Palmer
Image by: Steve Palmer
The next day Steve was taken to Good Hope Hospital in Sutton Coldfield, West Mids., by his friend and was told to wait in A&E.
Steve, who is dad to three-year-old Jacob and seven-year-old Charlie, said: “The doctor said he thought it might be sepsis and cellulitis so put me on a saline drip overnight
and gave me paracetamol because my temperature was very high.
“The next day I was transferred to hand specialists at the QE in Birmingham where a surgeon told me again he thought it was sepsis.
“I was taken down to surgery and was operated on for four-and-a-half hours.
“When I came round doctors told me that they discovered it was actually necrotising fasciitis which is quite rare.
“The blood vessels under my knuckles were mush so the surgeons had to wash all of the infection away and pull down skin from my forearm onto the tendons before taking a skin graft from my leg onto my arm.
“I was very lucky and could easily have died. The surgeons saved my life and my arm.
“I’m back home but I’ve been told it’ll take 10 to 12 months before I can hold tools again. I’ve got two per cent use of my hand at the moment.
“It’s going to be a long long journey back to recovery. I just want to warn everyone now to wear gloves in the garden.
“It was a tiny cut I had on my hand but it was enough to let the bacteria in which almost killed me.”He was transferred to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham where surgeons operated to remove the dead and infected tissue from his arm.
A plastic surgeon was able to save his arm from being amputated and Steve is expected to take a year before making a full recovery.
Steve, who worked as an air conditioning engineer, has posted graphic pictures of his blackened arm on Facebook in a bid to warn others.
He said: “It was terrifying, it was like something from a horror movie. I could literally see my entire arm turning black.
“When the surgeon looked at my hand all the blood vessels in my knuckles had turned to mush.
“I just want to warn people to be careful and to wear gloves while gardening, particularly now that people will probably be spending more time in their gardens due to the coronavirus lockdown."
Steve was gardening with his wife Laura, 34, at their home in Polesworth, Warks., on March 7 when he cut his finger.
He said: "Me and my wife were in the garden tidying up.
“We live on the back of the River Anker which had flooded a couple of weeks earlier and messed the garden up a bit.
“We’d waited for the weather to get better so we could clean up.
"While I was clearing reeds which had been swept into the garden from the river I got a
little nick on my finger.
“I didn’t even notice it, I get little cuts all the time at work and just cracked on but there must have been all sorts of bacteria from the floods which got into the cut.
"The next morning I was meant to help my father-in-law do some cementing at his farm but when I looked at my middle finger it had swelled up and was red.
“I felt a bit soft for saying I couldn’t help him but went round anyway and played with the kids and on the piano but I could hardly move my finger.
“I said to Laura 'that starting to look a bit infected'.
"When I got home my knuckles were swollen and the infection had started to spread up my arm."
Image by: Steve Palmer
Image by: Steve Palmer
The next day Steve was taken to Good Hope Hospital in Sutton Coldfield, West Mids., by his friend and was told to wait in A&E.
Steve, who is dad to three-year-old Jacob and seven-year-old Charlie, said: “The doctor said he thought it might be sepsis and cellulitis so put me on a saline drip overnight
and gave me paracetamol because my temperature was very high.
“The next day I was transferred to hand specialists at the QE in Birmingham where a surgeon told me again he thought it was sepsis.
“I was taken down to surgery and was operated on for four-and-a-half hours.
“When I came round doctors told me that they discovered it was actually necrotising fasciitis which is quite rare.
“The blood vessels under my knuckles were mush so the surgeons had to wash all of the infection away and pull down skin from my forearm onto the tendons before taking a skin graft from my leg onto my arm.
“I was very lucky and could easily have died. The surgeons saved my life and my arm.
“I’m back home but I’ve been told it’ll take 10 to 12 months before I can hold tools again. I’ve got two per cent use of my hand at the moment.
“It’s going to be a long long journey back to recovery. I just want to warn everyone now to wear gloves in the garden.
“It was a tiny cut I had on my hand but it was enough to let the bacteria in which almost killed me.”
A space engineer has built her own cell phone with a ROTARY DIAL because she hates smartphones and texting
Image by: Adam Gray SWNS
A space engineer has built her own cell phone with a ROTARY DIAL because she despises smartphones and texting.
Justine Haupt, 34, spent three years creating the old school device which fits into her pocket with a battery that lasts up to 30 hours.
When she wrote about the retro cell phone on her website, so many people visited the post that her site crashed.
Justine has since been inundated with requests from fellow smartphone haters begging for their own version of the phone and she is now offering build-it-yourself kits.
The astronomy instrumentation engineer, at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, was inspired to make the phone because she dislikes the culture of smartphones and has never even owned one.
“I work in technology but I don’t like the culture around smartphones,” she said.
“I don’t like the hyper connected thing.
“I don’t like the idea of being at someone’s beck and call every moment and I don’t need to have that level of access to the internet.
“Whenever I want to look something up, I’m more than happy to do so when I am at my computer.
“I’ve never texted and building this phone was in part so that I would have a good excuse for not texting.
“Now I can hold up this phone and say, ‘No, I can’t text.’”
While Justine did once buy a Samsung Galaxy smartphone for her mother and played around on it herself, she said she got rid of the device after a month.
“I thought I would give it a try but I lasted less than a month with it.
“I went back to my flip phone.
“I’m an engineer, I love technology, but the phone is not the way I want to do it.”
She is also not a fan of the interface on a smartphone or the touch screen.
“The interface is absolutely horrible,” she said.
“When you open an application and then you want it to go away but you don’t know if it is closed - that grates against the fibre of my being.”
Justine’s appreciation of rotary dials inspired her project.
“Rotary dials are neat and I wanted to include them in a project.
“I had had a flip phone for a long time and it can technically text so I wanted an even more dumbed down phone.
“I thought: ‘why not make a rotary dial phone?’
“I wanted it to fit in my pocket, be sleek, something I could actually use.”
The project was stop-start until two months ago when she decided to finally finish the device.
“I had the idea three years ago.
“I started putting it together and then I lost interest and it was in a box in the closet for a while.
“It was only about two months ago that I said: ‘I’m going to finish this thing’.”
Image by: Adam Gray SWNS
Image by: Adam Gray SWNS
Image by: Adam Gray SWNS
Image by: Adam Gray SWNS
Image by: Adam Gray SWNS
Justine sourced a rotary dial from an old Trimline telephone, making sure the dial was small enough to fit on a phone which would slip into her pocket.
“I was particular about getting one that could be as compact as possible.”
She bought a cell phone radio development board from hardware company Adafruit and the first cell phone prototype was very basic with wires showing.
“I did it just to prove it could work,” she said.
“I then designed my own circuitry.”
Justine used a 3D printer to create the cell phone case and added speed dialing buttons so she could call her husband, David Van Popering, 57, and her mother, Lorraine Labate, 60, at the click of a button.
The button for David is labelled ‘Da’ and Lorraine’s button is ‘La’, an abbreviation of Llama, Justine’s nickname for her mother.
“If I want to call my husband, I can call him by pushing a single button. I can call people more quickly on this phone than on my old phone.
“In rare cases when I want to call a new number, I do use the rotary dial and it is a fun, tactile experience.”
Justine added an e-paper display to the phone so that she could see messages and missed calls.
“It’s actual e-paper, the same material that you find on Kindles.
“Those kinds of displays are cool and are under utilised in technology.”
The phone takes an AT&T prepaid sim card which is compatible with the cell phone radio.
The device is 4 inches tall, 3 inches wide and 1 inch thick - easily fitting into Justine’s pocket.
“The battery lasts for a solid 24 hours, maybe 30 hours.
“It is actually my phone - I don’t carry my flip phone with me anymore.
“It fits into my pocket and, in total bulk, I don’t think it is much bigger than a large smartphone with a protective case on it.”
Justine published a post about the cell phone on her website on February 10 and so many people visited her site that it crashed under the demand.
“I never expected to go viral with this,” Justine said.
“There was so much demand.
“I didn’t want to sell it at first but everyone was clamoring and I got so many emails from people begging to buy a phone.
“Finally someone suggested I should at least make a kit.
“I very quickly put together a new version of the circuit that would be a little more robust.”
Justine created another version of the cell phone with a turquoise case.
Customers can buy the kit, which includes the circuit board and the 3D printed parts, from Justine’s company Sky’s Edge for $170, but they will have to source their own rotary dial.
“Now I’m looking at making a more inclusive kit that will come with everything you need,” Justine added.
“In a week, I’ve had around 30 orders.”
Justine admitted that the phone’s popularity has baffled her.
“I’m not totally sure why people responded to it the way they did.
“Maybe they see it as a hipster gadget which I hate because to me, it’s an actual phone.
“But there’s a surprising number of people who have identified with my philosophy of not liking smartphone culture - I’m pleasantly surprised that those people are out there.”
Video by: Gabriella Petty
