Bumblebee Rescue!

The weather has been a rollercoaster these last weeks, with 20° four weeks ago and light snow over the last few days. What’s more, the weather changes every 10 minutes and 500 metres. And all of this while the first bumblebees are out, seeking nectar from the first flowers. Then they get hit by the snow and almost freeze to death. If I find them, I take them in for a snack and some warmth. They are gentle creatures and will snuggle in your hand.

Click for cute!

Look at that tongue! Like a flying ant eater.

Resin Art: Pokémon! Gotta Wear Them All! Also: Paging Hekuni Cat

Hekuni Cat, I don’t have your address. Please sent it to the Affinity address linked in the sidebar.

Some fun with Pokémon. the kids in school always love my Pokémon themed attire, be it the mask, the pencil case or the T-shirts.

Umbreon and Espeon. I made matching earrings, just simple studs, but they do have a tendency to get lost in bed…

The next set will go out to a friend as a belated birthday present. We’ll meet in a park today to go for a walk. Distance and sunshine and fresh air…

These are two brass rings separated by rhinestones. The top one has flowers in it, the bottom one gold leaf.

The next ones are fairly simple, but I do love them. All unicorny and shiny.

And last but not least:

People, miracles do happen! As you may remember, my relationship with my mother is best described as “difficult”. To not put too fine a point to it, she was abusive. One of her tactics was to be never satisfied with what I did. I got an A-, best grade in class? Why isn’t it an A+? We were recently talking about the kids and she mentioned that while #1 was smart as me and also chaos incarnate like me, she wasn’t ambitious like me. I later thought “well, maybe that’s because you only loved me when I was the best”. This tactic extended to my hobbies. She’d never have a kind word or even praise, just a lot of non-constructive criticism.

Well, last week I gave my sister a set of Strawberry earrings and necklace and she asked me for a pair of earrings in brown with a bit of gold and when I gave them to her yesterday she actually liked them and thanked me and I was like “Lady, I don’t know who you are and what you did to my mum, but I really like you and you can stay.” Apparently an old dog can learn new tricks…

Degupdate: Dandelion

It’s been a while since we had a degupdate, and to be honest, for a long time I couldn’t bear to look through my phone for pics, because I would keep coming upon pics of sweet Gracie. Even though I know logically that I didn’t do anything wrong, and a veteran degu keeper assured me that so far they always lost animals when socialising new animals, it still broke my heart.

But Candy and Estelle are very happy together. Candy is a very dominant character (and Gracie was as well, which I think doomed the whole thing from the start), while Estelle is a very gentle character and they fit together well without hardly ever even having a mild fight. Now that spring is here it’s time to start feeding them fresh greens, which has to be done carefully, because after a winter of hay and dry feed, switching them to large amounts of fresh green would make them sick. So for the last two weeks or so they have gotten a few leaves of dandelion each day and they agree that its the Best. Thing. Ever.

The pics are all of Candy, because Estelle still is camera shy.

Candy doesn’t know what shy means. She also doesn’t know what holding still means. Now that they’re fully grown, the differences between the two of them become more visible, at least to their human family. Candy is lighter in her colouration, the ears and feet are sand colour, while Estelle’s are darker.

And here’s a video of Candy. You can hear the little one in the background doing her “degu voice”.

The Last Birds of Winter

Ahh, my friends, Spring is coming. We actually had a “heat wave”, with more than 20°C in February. Climate change will be no fun, but there’s nothing you can do about an early spring day but enjoy it. The pics here are a few weeks old, but I didn’t get around to post them. BTW, <b>Charly and rq</b>, the cranes are on their way. I sent them with greetings for you.

And then we had a very rare visitor, and they didn’t want to stay for an extensive photo shooting, so I only got one halfway decent pic:

If you ever wondered what the back of a sparrowhawk looked like…

Resin Art: Spring in Space

Let’s start with the spring part and some explanation about how certain pieces are done.

While blue is and will always be my favourite colour, occasionally I want some other colour as well. In this piece I went for greens and yellows.

I’m not quite sure what to do with it. Most certainly a necklace, as it’s about 2″ wide, but I don’t think I’ll just screw an eyelet on. More like some easy wire wrapping. This piece has been worked “top to bottom”. All these UV resin pieces have many layers, which means I’m constantly working on 2 or three projects at once, adding a layer to one while the other one is curing under the UV lamp. There are two ways you can go: bottom to top or top to bottom. Most pieces are worked bottom to top: you start with a base, which can either be a free form, an epoxy blank or a bezel, and then add layer after layer.

When working with a mould, or in this case a concave blank, you add things to the bottom side (though of course you can add stuff to the top as well). This gives you a watery or ambery feeling as the light is bent and reflected.

This on the other hand is bottom to top. The seashell and the pearls are sitting on top of the blank with a blue background.

Starry night earrings. What can I say, I love everything galaxy themed…

Not yet sure what to make with this one. This one has also been worked top to bottom in a mould as opposed to the other way round that full spheres are worked.

A little fun with some left over resin from the oval pendant.

Sparkly earrings with blue rhinestones and home dyed pink baby’s breath.

These were easy. I drilled some holes into the turquoise blanks and glued in the rhinestones, and now I’m again unsure. They would make rather large earrings, but also rather small pendants…

And last, but not least, Hekuni Cat’s die:

Hmpf. I’m constantly looking for good UV resin. I found some on Etsy and I really liked it, and I got 200 ml and when I tried to reorder, the seller no longer exported to Germany. Then I found some from a small German company, which wasn’t too expensive and I decided to give it a try. The website helpfully informed me that if I added another 489 € worth of good I’d get free shipping, but I declined. I was really keen on trying it out and thought that the die would be a good project for it.

Oh dear. First of all, it stinks. So. Much. I put on a normal N95 respirator and it was still almost unbearable. It can only be worked with wearing the half face respirator I also use when finding some hidden asbestos in the house. Then it came out rather runny, but quickly started to thicken, so it was a nuisance to get into the mould. I thought that this meant it was already curing, but then it didn’t cure for a long time and all the inlays pretty much sunk to the bottom.

When it had finally cured I noticed it had shrunk so much that there was a big hole inside and I needed to fill that one up with more resin. What I will say for this resin is that it cures extremely hard. Which made cleaning the project up difficult, of course…

Hekuni Cat, if you want another one I’ll make you a new one. If not, or in any case, I need your address. Youc an send it to Affinity submissions, voyager will surely pass it on to me.

Resin Art: Strawberries!

I need spring. Today feels a bit like early spring. The air tastes differently and the birds are chattier (mostly complaining about the neighbours’ cat camping out under the bird feeder). But honestly, this is my least favourite time. I still have about 4 weeks until it really turns green and I hate it. I don’t think I could move further north. Sure, if I’d grown up there, I’d probably only get seriously annoyed come March or April, but I’m used to getting sick and tired of winter come February.

Anyway, to cheer me up I made, you won’t guess it, resin jewellery.

First of all, I made lots of blanks from epoxy resin:

Here you can see exactly why I can’t work downstairs with the epoxy right now. All dull and bubbly. Also, when I took them out after 24 hours, they were still extremely soft. A few hours upstairs in the warm kitchen took care of that. So last night I took the red droplets and turned them into my favourite fruit.

That’s always two droplets glued together, with a coat of red UV resin. I love working with mica powders as they give an amazing sparkle, but you got to be careful when working with UV epoxy because yeah, saturated opaque colours won’t cure. That’s why the blanks needed to be red already. The tiny seeds are caviar beads for nail art and no, it’s not as much work as it looks like to attach them. Finally I made some leaves with green UV resin and attached those. I’m so ready for spring.

I also got rq’s sphere done. Again, the pic sucks. They are not to be photographed.

Darwintine Fundraiser: Get your Shinies

As you all know, we’re doing another round of fundraiser to get that albatross off PZ’s and other people’s necks. I know, it’s getting boring and annoying, and right now nobody is made of money anyway, but the good people caught up in Carrier’s bullshit (may he step on all the Legos) don’t deserve having to deal with this either.

And, as you also know, I’ve been crafting my evenings away, so let’s combine the pleasant with the useful, as the German saying goes (das Angenehme mit dem Nützlichen verbinden) and sell off some jewellery. While it may be too late for a Valentine’s gift, any lover of jewellery will tell you that it’s never a bad moment for a pretty gift.

Rules:

I’m not doing an auction but sell them off at fixed prices. First come, first served, though I can always try to make something similar for you.
I’ll pay for economy shipping. If you want an upgrade, you chip in.
All items shown in this post or my previous posts are up for sale. You can find them here, here, here and here. And here. And here. Man, I have been busy…
The prices are fixed: a set of earrings 15$, a pendant 10$, a set of them 20 $. Unless I say otherwise, but you’ll see that in the post.
All pendants come with a waxed cotton necklace, so you can wear them immediately. If you want a chain, please inquire.
Payment: Just send the money directly to the fundraiser linked above. If I don’t know you well, I will ask you to send a confirmation to me.

All set? Here’s some nice stuff. You’ll know most of it already, I just tried to get some nicer pics. Yeah, still not great. I’m more of an outdoors photographer than a studio artist.

The colours are a bit off here. They are much redder. I could also work them into pendants, you know?

Inspired by Central American jewellery. the golden droplet is attached to the stopper, so if you want to tone them down a bit, just use a different stopper.

These did not quite turn out the way I wanted. Actually they were meant to be the central piece in the ones above. they are a bit less than 2 cm in diameter and go for a tenner. Of course I would also clean them up for you.

These are quite light and elegant. Gold foil and abalone shell

I’ll colour in the numbers for you. I realised I hadn’t quite finished when I took the pic.

The last two are the same sphere. I really tried, but if there is a way to get a nice pic of these, I haven’t found it yet…

So, who will be your Valentine?

In Which Yours Truly Almost got Caught Up in the Bystander Effect

The Bystander Effect is an interesting phenomenon, in which people become less likely to do the right thing if there are more people present*. In short, everybody thinks that if there was something that should be done, somebody else would already have done it, resulting in nobody doing anything. This is why in an emergency you never say “somebody should call the emergency hotline”, but “You there in the red jacket, call the emergency hotline”.

Today we went for our usual walk at our usual lake. The weather was lovely. Temperatures had risen to 4-5° above zero, sun was shining, no wind.

Before the current cold spell (and we got off lucky here with -10° C at the lowest) we had lots of warm (+10°C) rain, so when I went to the lake on Wednesday it was still completely open. It froze over since, but of course not completely, and I will not speculate on the thickness of the ice. But when we arrived there, there were people on the ice. Mostly young men (who else…) but a few people with small children as well. Everybody around exclaimed “are they mad???”, but nobody did anything. And… neither did I at first. Because there are so many emotions at once. Disbelief, worry, anger (how stupid can you be, how dare you take the children), but also fear about what will happen if I do something (Including the fear of being accused of wasting emergency service time) and of course the idea that you don’t tattle to the cops. Mr was exactly the same. When I said “I should call the emergency hotline” he was “yes, you should”. Not calling it himself.

Well, I did. It took some time until I got to the person who was responsible, who apparently hadn’t left his office in a while, because he asked me “how many people were there” and I said “about 10” and he said “not at the lake, but on the ice” as if you could find a nice quiet place right now with only 10 people in sight. We walked away after we informed the emergency hotline, because there was nothing left to do. If they’d fallen in, we couldn’t have done anything, so we went to the woods where there are less people.

At least when we returned, the Office of Public Order was there and yelled at people who still thought it was funny to step on the ice but on the other side of the lake. Dudes, when 100 people around say that you’re a fucking idiot, you’re probably not some edgy rebel fighting against the forces of evil. Chances are that you’re just a fucking idiot. Mr said I’d probably saved a life today, but I’m pretty sure the person whose life I possibly saved is pretty angry with the asshole who called the cops. As they say, there’s no glory in prevention.

*Though, as numbers increase so does the likelihood of somebody finally doing something

Resin Art: More bling

No, I haven’t forgotten you, I just didn’t get around to taking pics last week. But to make up for it you’ll get lots of them this week.

First: dice. I haven’t played a pen and paper RPG since long before the pandemic, but I swear I’ll do so again. I ordered a die mould to see if that would work. The results are mixed.

Well, the first one was flat out unusable, because silly me put the lid on the wrong way round. The mould works with a little lid you put on top where the #1 is with just a tiny hole to allow for resin to escape or be added. And I put it in the wrong way round, so the sides came up short and there’s no #1. The only way to save it was to put in a hook and call it a pendant. the other one is actually really pretty, but the top side still isn’t what it should be. I decided to only show you the pretty sides.

Next, the unhpotographable galaxy spheres. Sorry. Too many curves and shiny for the damn camera to get a focus on. I’ll see if I can get a better one with the real camera.

These ones turned out really nice. Dyed baby’s breath and small brass hoops make them really light and elegant

Chocolates anybody? I worked with a matte topcoat here, making them look like sea glass.

These go nicely with the necklace from two weeks ago.

Black and white. Baby’s breath in clear resin combined with black semi circles in brass.

“Garnets”. Same technique as the Mermaid Tears, this time in red. I made these shorter, but with at least as many droplets.

Galaxy tears with Bohemian glass beads. The blue is just amazing.

And last but not least, elegant circles:

The rings have baby’s breath, caviar beads and gold foil. The Bohemian glass beads in the centre are an amazing dark purple the camera refuses to catch.

IMPORTANT: If you have your eyes set on any of these pieces, I’ll put some up for sale for the upcoming fundraiser.

And finally here’s some pics from the “workbench”:

This is the small assortment of things I currently have upstairs. Yes, It’s the small assortments. BTW, one of the sensible additions to the pile was a small hand drill. While you can see the Dremel in the pic, the hand drill is useful for pre-drilling, especially on round surfaces, where the Dremel is prone to slip (it will drill your finger nicely). Just drill a mm with the hand drill, do the rest with the nice tool.

This is how the kitchen table looks at the end of the night. Thanks to Rüdügür the vacuum robot I need to clean it up every night because the chairs need to go on the table.

What do you mean, poor people should have tasty food?

Pretty regularly you get not poor people all over (social) media being upset at the idea that poor people might eat something other than oats. Like buying a birthday cake on food stamps or the whole rule where you cannot buy hot food on food stamps which is only good for punishing people who may not even have cooking facilities. Or the recent scandal in the UK where the families that qualify for free school lunch got food hampers instead of a voucher, because they might buy something the Tories don’t approve of. Basically the same people who will tell you that all Cubans receiving staples of rice and beans is a horrible sign of socialism will demand that poor people in capitalism never eat anything but staples.

But sometimes “the left” isn’t any better and all signs of people enjoying food is seen as decadence. Last summer somebody dared to post a picture of her lunch, doing basically the thing social media was invented for, and received hate and harsh criticism for, checks note, basically having an unconstructed sandwich for lunch. Now, the ultimate irony is of course that in France a charcuterie board is probably the most “paysanne” (rural and down to earth) lunch ever and nobody in the country of foi gras would think it bourgeois, but I guess for some people anybody having food that is not shitty (and has been that shitty for at least three generations) must be condemned as a sign of being a member of the elites.

If you — *throws a dart at a board* — make a charcuterie board you're a class traitor pic.twitter.com/HravYAANkb

— Bill Haywood-Jablome (@IslesFGC) August 3, 2020

You think that’s funny? Here’s one even funnier: You take an item that used to be present in every kitchen like the good old cast iron skillet, but got often thrown away as “new” things like teflon coated frying pans came up (making their descendants have to buy them again, thank you, grandma…) and declare them to be bourgeois. I mean, unless you decide you need Le Creuset in your life, they are not even expensive new and you can get them second hand because they are practically indestructible (unlike the silly teflon coated ones).

a lodge skillet is like $30 you people are just addicted to saying words pic.twitter.com/la9iXngrgf

— vampire workday (@imbobswaget) December 9, 2020

Which gets me to a hypothesis: The people attacking others for enjoying food are simply bad cooks. They themselves have no idea about how to prepare a tasty meal, regardless of whether the ingredients are cheap or expensive (tonight’s dinner: griddle cakes. Most expensive item: an avocado as a side dish. Cost per person: 1.50, including the avocado). And because they can only get good food when eating out, they equate good food with luxury. They would totally buy a cast iron skillet just to let it rust (and put it in the dishwasher occasionally because it looks icky), but then they get angry at not being able to use it, so they have to declare it a “hallmark of bourgeois life”.

So, what’s the food or cooking item you’ve been shamed for because it was deemed “too bourgeois” (for a commoner like you)?

Resin Art: Just Tell me to Stop and I’ll Simply Ignore You

A girl can never have too many earrings…

Mermaid tears. The little droplets are perfect for using up leftover resin. For one thing every resin set with moulds contains a packet of those small screw eyes. Because a 10 ct article suddenly turns three moulds into a 53 pieces craft set, so I have more than I’ll ever need. And then there’s always going to be some resin left over and I can turn it into droplets. One isn’t much, but put them together and you get this.

Geometrical lines are another thing I dig right now. OK, I dig everything right now.

I poured some blanks with epoxy resin because after I’m done neither the bubbles nor the matte surface matter, and it’s a good way to save up on the expensive UV resin. Art is never a cheap substitute for therapy. It’s a damn expensive one. But hey, right now I have no other way to spend my fun money but buying craft supplies on Etsy and it does me so much good. Three hours a night where everything is nice and pretty and I don’t eat my body weight in chocolate.

I like how these turned out, I don’t like how some dyes completely change their hue when hardened under the UV light. The blue was much more pronounced before hardening. That’s probably the next trip to the virtual art supplies store.

Resin Art: A Cornflower for Jazzlet

This one’s an older piece. I share Jazzlet’s love for cornflowers. Not only are they one of the rare blue flowers, they are also very undemanding flowers. Just throw a handful of seeds and you have flowers for years to come. I really need to dry more flowers in summer so I can have fun in winter…

Again, huge problems in getting the camera to focus…

Jazzlet, if you want it, just send me your address.

And here’s some more UV resin fun. I’m still very much into making matching necklaces and earrings.

The shape is pretty irregular, but in this case I like it, as it matches the marble/pebble design.

And I made a necklace to match the cherry blossom earrings:

As you can see, I changed the way I made the petals. They are more regular this way and much easier to work. I’m not sure which ones I like better, I just know that I would have lost patience making all the petals the other way.

Resin Art: In the Midnight Hour, She Cried More, More, More

I hope you aren’t tired of my jewellery yet, because I’m once again firmly stuck in the crafting phase of the pandemic and I have no interest of getting out of it soon. For one thing, there are worse coping mechanisms (just don’t ask my bank account. OTOH there’s little else to spend my fun money on right now). For another, I end up with cool jewellery. I can start something and then before I notice or have time to worry, it’s midnight and I go to bed happy.

As I mentioned before, I’m currently working with UV resin, which also means I watch a lot of UV resin tutorials on Youtube. Here’s an interesting divide: Tutorials for epoxy resin, especially lamps and such are often by American guys with huge tool shops that make me constantly unhappy, because I lack the space and probably 20k to blow on the machines.

See for example this guy, who does make cool stuff:

UV resin artists OTOH tend to be female and Japanese. You can watch their videos for inspiration or pure relaxation, like this lady’s videos:

I’m wondering if it has something to do with culture, but also space, of which Americans outside the big cities seem to have more.

Anyway, I wanted to show you what I came up with:

These two pairs are made with nail art transfer foil. They’re not perfect yet as the transfer foil is tricky and needs some practise, but I do like them. I’m currently wearing the gold ones, which look really classy.

The next two pairs also belong together, one being trial and error the other being what I actually intended.

Don’t get me wrong, these are perfectly lovely earrings (though the right one is a bit bubbly from the flowers). They are just not what I had planned- I first made a smaller square with the gold foil, which was then embedded in the larger square… Of course the small clear square vanished completely in the clear resin, making that extra step pretty much redundant.

Back to square one (haha). This time I mixed golden pigment in with the small square and now I get those crisp geometrical lines.

I need to remember to dip the flowers in resin before I embed them. Too many bubbles, but I still really like the simple elegance here.

Than goodness they came out fine, because the third project for that night surely didn’t.

I was using up some UV resin that I still had, and I still had it for a good reason: it’s horrible. I have no idea how something can be that thick and runny at the same time. As a result there are tons of irremovable bubbles but it also kept flowing over the sides, making the whole piece clunky. I was looking for some delicate elegance, I got this. I tried again yesterday and this time the results are much more what I was looking for:

Pendant with matching earrings. The colour is a bit dark in the pic, they’re the same midnight blue as above, a pigment that I absofuckinglutely love. These pieces also show one of the great advantages of using UV resin: precise control. I can add the wire and the pearls and the beads and place them exactly where I want them.

And last but not least, a completely different technique: Cherry blossom earrings

I like earrings where it#s clearly a pair, but two different designs. These are made by forming the wire into petals and then adding a thin layer of resin. Here you really have to get the consistence right. I first tried with the above mentioned blue pigment, but adding pigment made the resin too thick, so I had to try again with clear ink for resin. I’m not completely happy with how the flowers are dangling on the chain and might try to change that again. I also think I need a matching necklace.

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Affinity

Art, Fun, & Nonsense.

No apology

AiG ❤️ Dawkins & Coyne

Discrimination, Inequity and Exclusion (DIE)

Destroy Pop Culture?

The US is a dying democracy

Fixing Websites

The human vestigal accessory olfactory systems and feelings.

I don't want a Great Firewall of America

"AI Art Just Regurgitates Existing Images"

Bumblebee Rescue!

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Resin Art: Pokémon! Gotta Wear Them All! Also: Paging Hekuni Cat

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Degupdate: Dandelion

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The Last Birds of Winter

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Resin Art: Spring in Space

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Resin Art: Strawberries!

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In Which Yours Truly Almost got Caught Up in the Bystander Effect

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Resin Art: More bling

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Resin Art: Just Tell me to Stop and I’ll Simply Ignore You

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Resin Art: A Cornflower for Jazzlet

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Resin Art: In the Midnight Hour, She Cried More, More, More

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