really love keeping up with my mutuals through their little tags and vent posts. getting updates on how they’re doing is something like: glad to know your job at the library is going well. i’m sorry you haven’t gotten that raise. glad your finals went well. i’m sorry your teacher is so unhelpful. glad your tv show got renewed. i’m sorry they killed your favorite character. glad that you scored tickets to see your favorite artist. i’m sorry they aren’t touring near you at all. glad your cat is doing well. i’m sorry your mom is sick again. glad you’re feeling better now that it’s your favorite season. i’m sorry your meds aren’t working. glad you’re married now. i’m sorry you have to step back for your mental health. glad you’re still here. i’m sorry life is so hard. glad you’re alive, i hope things get easier for you soon
additional pics + process and commentary under the cut as usual!!
i put this in my friend's hand and she, while holding what was clearly a magnet, still thought i'd handed her an actual edible blackberry. seriously guys this is a highlight experience of my life.
^ worktable pics!!! i don't have a single process pic so alas these will have to do.
im seriously sooooo proud of this!!! the design has really improved since the last round — bigger cuter pips, rounder pips, more colors, more focus on "berry appeal", same good dimensions, but more realistic and more complex!!!
process:
test piece: this piece is actually the second one i made, i made an entire test piece that was about 0.25" longer than this one (about the same width) with pips that varied much more in size (some 4mm, some as small as 2.5mm diameter) and a translucent clay core/backing. it was ... very informative, but not that cute.
color mixing: this was less tedious than before, and my eye for color is really getting a lot better, which feels great! i just have to accept that i will need to custom mix color every time i make something bc i'm really picky. i thought to actually pull up pics of blackberries on my phone for color matching. i think this is a slightly redder and slightly blacker fruit color than before. certainly less blue -- these fruits are apparently not very blue at all, despite how dark they are hahaha. that's unexpected! the redder pips i started with the same base blackberry color and just added red, purple, and black until it looked right. as usual, i'm a firm believer in keeping a shared color base when mixing color for a project so that all of the colors that are used "feel" cohesive to the viewer. i'm especially happy w how the redder pips turned out, i feel like they contribute a lot to the "realness" feeling of this berry!
pip making: this was also less tedious than before! i purchased a 4mm clay ball roller from formiicutter on etsy, so i just rolled roughly 4mm spheres in both colors and left them. this was the first time i tried brushing with cornstarch (after. actually reading the ball roller instructions hahahaha) and it was easy! i was worried about the powder clinging but it eventually just kind of fell off, idk. super convenient and left the roller much less dirty, i see why other clay people call it "magic dust" haha.
core building: i made the core out of some discard too-blue blackberry base color that i'd set to the side while i was trying to mix the right blackberry color. this worked great, bc it meant that any gaps between the pips just disappear. this would be actually my #1 recommendation for core color. i initially tried using half a cylinder as the core, but then it just never had enough "berry roundness" / visually and physically was way too "flat", when it was really important to me to convey the "plumpness" of this blackberry. i ended up rolling a full "cylinder" core (with a flat top, tapered edges, and a tapered bottom, kind of like an acorn shape if the sides of an acorn were straighter), attaching pips to about 2/3 around and up to the same level as the flat top, and then cutting the last pipless 1/3 of the core off with an xacto knife to form the flat back of the magnet. pictures of "blackberry cut in half" were really helpful for getting a visual of what the core shape should have been (though i'd initially searched them to understand pip attachment). i do wish i'd made that cut a little cleaner but eh. nobody can see that part bc of that's the back of the magnet. oh and also used a loop/engraver(?) tool to cut out a circular divot in the back for the magnet to sit in -- i like to have it glued on the face and sides for extra security.
pip attaching: started from the bottom this time, with a single pip at the center and then moving up in a "doors and windows" formation, leaving space on the edges when i got too close to where the "edge" of the magnet back would be. from blackberry pictures, the reddish pips usually appeared alone, near the top of the berry, so i did that. i ended up not putting any in the top row only bc i felt it would help with clarity of conveying "this is a blackberry" to maintain a fully blackberry-colored top row. eventually after i cut the flat back of the core, i filled in the gaps around the edges with more full pips and a couple cut in half, which seemed to work really well.
pip rounding: my number one breakthru of this whole process! one of the MAJOR issues i'd had with all previous blackberry iterations is that. polymer clay softens when its warm and when pressure is applied. my hands are warm, and when building something that is round, you have to hold it, and that made the pips squish flat (this is also true of the first iteration linked above, it's just not shown in that pic bc well. this is the internet lol. #curation.) but! i put the flat magnet on one of the metal jar lids that i bake them on, and it turns out you can use a small paintbrush dipped in rubbing alcohol to "brush" the flattened clay back into a round dome! this is really important to conveying the "fresh, plump berry" feeling. i had tried with a needle tool and also tried "just touch it less" which. this is made with my hands, so obviously that didn't work so good. this paintbrush technique? really good, really effective, it's the perfect amount of pressure and the combo of soft brush bristles + rubbing alcohol actually ends up smoothing out the clay surface perfectly!!!!
baking: it was so stuck on the jar lid LOL i normally put a sheet of parchment underneath but i couldnt pry the berry off so i just baked it as-is. 15min at 225ish farenheit.
magnet attachment: nothing to say. brush on superglue, insert magnet. push berry flat onto magnet on the tabletop to make sure it's level. that's all! very straightforward.
glazing: two very thin coats of sculpet because it dries SLIGHTLY yellow -- i'm talking like, very very barely warm tinge of yellow, and the color of the berry had baked SLIGHTLY darker / cooler-toned than the color had been when i was building it. not that this would really matter but again. the point of this magnet is to convey "plump, appealing, appetizing berry", so. i made sure there wasn't any glaze pooling in the crevices, and held it up (magneted to my gripper tool) against a fan to dry the glaze quicker between coats.
notes and commentary:
i didn't think size mattered (<- HAHAHA), but it really, really does. a 1.25" long berry looks "large" instead of "cutely appetizing" to me. this one ended but being ~0.75" long and just a bit more than a half inch wide, actually really similar dimensions to the initial keychain version, and it really captures "cutely appealing berry shape" to me.
pip size and shape also matter a lot! the initial pips are a lot smaller, maybe even 2mm? these ones are 4mm in diameter and look a lot cuter (and more realistic, i didn't realize until i bought blackberries after the first keychain attempt that the pips are so large!). i tested out rolling them into blunted teardrops when attaching to the core, but ultimately spheres looks the best and gives the most control when it comes to consistency of how "wide" the berry is getting and how consistent the surface height of the pips are. and it's easiest, so big win.
figuring out that i could use a painbrush to stroke "up" toward the top of the dome of each pip to round it back out is the biggest breakthrough of this whole project. the paintbrush rly can get into crevices and leaves no marks and has the good balance between verrrrry light pressure and easy to hold when applying pressure in many directions by design. seriously, so awesome. shoutout paintbrushes!!!
this is hard to see on this magnet, so i'm not toooo bothered by it, but if you look at the top ring of an actual blackberry, the final topmost ring of pips is actually more "trapezoids with rounded corners" than the "round balls" of the body of the blackberry. i do kind of wish i'd thought to look at this before i baked it (especially since in my process right now that top row of pips is attached in a separate step from the body pips), but watever. it's chill. nobody will die except my commitment to perfectionism, which is honestly arguably good.
i did consider painting in the little greenish yellow-grey stem attachment divot part at the top but man. god knows what that color is, i tried to mix it for a while with green + yellow + grey and could nottt figure it out and ultimately gave up. again, that's not the part most visible to the viewer, so it doesn't reaaaaaally matter.
total time on this was probably 4-5h? color mixing was half an hour or 45min (would have been an hour if i was completely starting from base colors, but i had some old blackberry test colors leftover), the test piece took about an hour maybe +15min, and then the actual final guy took about an hour or an hour and a half (counting baking time, and counting the 10min i spent painting the pips back into spheres haha). pretty quick! truly reaping the benefits of adapting a design rather than starting one from scratch.
the new york times has such a great series of elevated butter noodles, if you ever want a super fast easy dinner that still feels grown up and you can emulsify pasta water + butter together basically the sky is your limit
ya got
gochujang butter noodles
peanut butter noodles
chili crisp fettuccine alfredo
miso butter noodles
any one of these + a bag of salad or whatever vegetable side you find easiest/cheapest, and you've got yourself a full meal that tastes far above the effort you put in.
locusts are SO fucked up. imagine if your apartment complex got too crowded during a drought so everyone in it started overproducing serotonin until they gained 100lb of pure muscle and then chewed through the drywall of every building in the neighborhood
we as a society do not deserve queen deltarune. why the fuck is she not inescapable within this fandom. i like tenna just fine but she deserved what he got
