Start with a large sheet of cardboard. Stores like home depot have large moving boxes that come flat like this, perfect for this project.
I use a projector to trace my butterfly, but you can also put tracing paper up to a screen and glue it to your cardboard, or ask your library to let you use their projector.
Make sure to trace not just the outside, but also all of the markings and patterns. Doing the antennae as well and keeping the scrap cardboard will allow you to measure out the right length.
2.
Cut around the outside of your lepidopteran and crease where the wings meet each other and the body. I use my hands, but a ruler can help. After bending your wings into a natural position, make the body and head with your clay of choice, mine is foam clay which is cheap and easy to use.
Blend the sides of the body into the wings just enough to stick, this will hold the pose you've chosen.
Prop up the wings with whatever is around and keep in a safe spot to dry. Mine dries overnight at this size. You can see I've used bottles for mine
3.
Once dry and solidified, the clay holds the wings in place in the way you left them.
Measure your antennae wire a little longer than needed and poke it into the clay. If it doesn't stay, add a little dot of super or hot glue at the base.
Glue a mounting bracket on the back. You can angle this however you like to have your lepidopteran upright, sideways, or even upside down
4.
Paint your sections individually so you don't lose your trace lines. I go in with white first to cover up the print on the cardboard, then put the correct colors over that.
If making a high contrast lep like this, go in with black at the end to clean up your edges.
If adding any fur to the body, get a piece larger than you need and hot glue it on, then trim the backing underneath the fibers with tiny snips, as not to cut the fur itself, and carefully glue the edges of the backing to the body as well
5.
Brush a matte finish like mod podge over your final product. Hold your lep up to where you want it to hang, then mount with a nail
Jesus Tapdancing Christ... THIS is a good welt pocket and the people who designed Simplicity 2895 ought to be blasted well ASHAMED of themselves for the crap way THEY wanted a welt pocket made. *SNARLS*
This is how I learned to do it and a good example of what you want to see in a short form tutorial: pinning, pressing, seam finishing, good fabric handling.
I would mention that you can make the pocket facing with a small panel of your matching fabric that is visible and the rest in a lighter fabric to reduce bulk. That's a lot of denim layers for comfort.
Thats the gentlest one. He made a whole parody song around the fact that one sheriff did a double take at a cake on his kitchen table:
And this is one of the ones that really hurt a grown man's feelings:
Court cases set precedents that similar cases may cite to basically win instantly, so let it be known the united states judicial system has concluded that if an officer of the law breaks into your house on false pretenses, you have a constitutional right to make youtube videos, using their personal photos, in which you claim to have cucked him 🫡🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲
No tech CEO or NYT bestselling novelist will ever match the creativity of a humble French postman who decided on a whim to spend thirty-three years building a surreal, majestic palace with the bricks and mortar of his dreams.
1. Ferdinand Cheval tripped over a stone and was inspired by its shape, eventually stating, "It represents a sculpture so strange that it is impossible for man to imitate, it represents any kind of animal, any kind of caricature. I said to myself: since Nature is willing to do the sculpture, I will do the masonry and the architecture."
Here's the tripped-over sandstone in question, which explains some of the abstract design:
On the American broadcast, about five seconds after the music started the announcer said about the woman, “she lists her hobbies as ‘forgetting things’ and ‘existential crises’”, and I can’t imagine a more delightful one-two punch
I like that this seems to run on wikipedia and/or inaturalist as a database so yes, every single thing in kingdom Animalia counts at every taxonomic level. Every genus of sea sponge, every cambrian fossil, have fun!!!
Controversial Truths About Ancient Egypt Masterpost
The pyramids were built by contemporary workers who received wages and were fed and taken care of during construction
The Dendera “lightbulb” is a representation of the creation myth and has nothing to do with electricity
We didn’t find “““copper wiring””” in the great pyramid either
Hatshepsut wasn’t transgender
The gods didn’t actually have animal heads
Hieroglyphs aren’t mysteriously magical; they’re just a language (seriously we have shopping lists and work rosters and even ancient erotica)
The ancient Egyptian ethnicity wasn’t homogeneous
Noses (and ears, and arms) broke off statues and reliefs for a variety of reasons, none of which are “there is a widespread archaeological conspiracy to hide the Egyptian ethnicity”
The carvings at Abydos aren’t modern machines but recarvings over old carvings. Sure they look like them but if you can read hieroglyphs and know that Ramesses II will even usurp the carvings of his own father just to be a little shit
‘No soot on the ceilings and walls of the Dendera temple!’ is actually because of extensive restoration works and not because Egyptians were in on shit like Baghdad “batteries”
While the Egyptians were fine-ass astronomers they didn’t align any of their enormous and/or important buildings to modern star constellations, because constellations look very different now than they did ~5000 years ago
The pyramid is the simplest, sturdiest shape with which to build and many different cultures discovered this in their own time. There were never any weird fish humans/aliens involved
I can’t believe I forgot my favourite Hill to Die On
Seth was not the god of “evil”, and despite his chaos providing a foil to order, he wasn’t completely villified until very late in Egyptian history, when he became associated with despised foreign enemies
Hats off to the few of you who’re reblogging this with tags saying you’re going to check my claims later. You make me not entirely despair of this hellhole.
Here are some vetted Egyptological books/sources (that are by and large appropriate for a lay-audience) you can find most, if not all of the above:
Lehner, M., The Complete Pyramids
Wilkinson, R. H., The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt
Hornung, E., The One and the Many: Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt
Dunand, F. & Zivie-Coche, C., Gods and Men in Egypt
Kemp, B., Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization
Bard, K., An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt
Stevenson Smith, W., The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt
Kitchen, K. A., The Life and Times of Ramesses II, King of Egypt
Sweeney, D., Sex and Gender (in Ancient Egypt)
McDowell, A. G., Village Life in Ancient Egypt: Laundry Lists and Love Songs
Weiqi 围棋 is one of the oldest board games in the world, originating in China over 2,500 years ago.
The game is played by two players who take turns placing black and white stones on a grid, usually 19x19 lines. The goal is to surround more territory than your opponent and capture their stones by completely enclosing them.
Despite its simple rules, Weiqi is known for its deep strategy and infinite possibilities. It’s not just a game—it’s also seen as an art form, a way to develop patience, discipline, and creative thinking.
Yongzi is a type of weiqi piece uniquely crafted from natural minerals such as agate and amber found in Baoshan, Yunnan. It is handmade through traditional methods and regarded as a treasure among Chinese weiqi equipment, often praised as the "ultimate treasure in the world of weiqi".
Made primarily from local stones like Nanhong agate, Huanglong jade, and black jade, supplemented with metals such as lead and tin. The pieces are formed by high-temperature melting and hand-dripping techniques. Following the ancient Ming Dynasty method of "fetching chestnuts from the fire", the process requires precise control of temperature. The finished pieces have a warm luster, a hard texture, and produce a clear, pleasant sound when placed on the board. White pieces exhibit a milky white hue with a subtle pearlescent glow, while black pieces are deep and glossy, edged with a bluish halo. They feel solid, smooth, and are highly resistant to wear. Originating in Ming Dynasty Baoshan (formerly known as Yongchang), the pieces are named "Yongzi" after their place of origin. Once offered as tributes to the imperial family, Yongzi gained fame during the Ming and Qing dynasties and is now recognized as an intangible cultural heritage.
Compared to common Weiqi pieces made of resin or glass, Yongzi combines practicality with collectible value. It represents the fusion of Weiqi culture and traditional craftsmanship, often used in high-end tournaments or as collectible art.
i'm reading the genius of birds by jennifer ackerman (amazing book) and today i learned that the first ever documented case of a bird making a tool to use as a weapon against another bird was a steller's jay breaking off and sharpening a stick to wield like a lance at a crow that was taking too long at a feeding station the jay also wanted to eat at. the jay tried to stab at the crow but narrowly missed, the crow lunged back, the jay dropped the stick, and the crow picked it up with the sharp end pointing towards the jay and pursued it into the trees
imagine the guy in front of you at mcdonald's is taking too long to order and so you fashion a blade on the spot and hold him at knifepoint. and then he steals your knife and points it back at you while chasing you out of the restaurant. and also the guy is twice your size
[ID: A quilt of patches of green irregularly tiled like a mosaic, radiating from smaller yellow and light green patches in the center to larger patches of deeper and browner shades at the edges. End ID]
When I was about to go to college my dad, who is a thoracic surgeon specialized in lung cancer, sat me down and told me I could be a stoner, but absolutely not a cigarette smoker
He’s operated on hundreds of cig smokers but no stoners
The average stoner doesn’t smoke nearly as many joints as a cig smoker smokes cigarettes. Many cig smokers will smoke 10+ cigs a day but the average stoner doesn’t smoke that many joints
Joints don’t have as many carcinogens
It is generally harder to quit nicotine than weed
People can have medicinal cannabis but no one has medicinal cigarettes
He was a stoner in med school and turned out fine but some of his cig smoking classmates are already dead
@buticaaba you are absolutely correct! My dad hates vapes. He says the lungs of cig smokers look black and kind of like asphalt, and that the lungs of vape smokers retain their pink color but are covered in burn like blisters. He participated in a double lung transplant on a 20 year old vape smoker and has done multiple drainings of vape smoker lungs that filled with fluids because they’re absolutely full of blisters.
When you smoke cigs you’re clogging your lungs with tar and other nasty stuff, but when you hit a vape you’re quite literally giving your lungs chemical burns.
So in my continued spiral down into the pits of fiber madness, I have started dyeing yarn.
Because I am Like This, what really tickles my fancy is specifically natural dye. Why? Because there's an element of adventure to it. It requires me to grub around in the ditch after goldenrod and crawl down into a creek bed after reed plumes. When you're doing it, what's gonna come out of the dye pot? The weather the plants grew in and the soil conditions affect things! It's neat!
This is great for the bajillion million squillion plants on this planet that will dye stuff yellow. I have hard tap water so madder root behaves like an absolute dream. There's black walnuts everywhere around here so tasty browns are no problem. I've got a gallon pickle jar of iron bits in vinegar to sadden those colors to olive greens and various grays.
However I am now running into the same thing humanity has run into for 10,000 years when dyeing with natural stuff; blue. Which comes from indigo or woad, of course. That's fine.
But more specifically, why is the simplest method for making indigo play nice a bucket of piss. YES THERE ARE OTHER METHODS BUT THE SIMPLEST AND TIME TESTED ONE IS A PISS BUCKET.
Indigo and woad contain the same dye compounds. They are, chemically speaking, complicated. The blue dye of indigo is the result of indigotin. Indigotin is insoluable in water and won't bind to shit. In the plant you will not find indigotin, though. You will find indican, which is colorless, water soluable, and loves to bind to anything it can touch. Wool. Cotton. Linen. Hands. Wood. Plastic. Whatever.
Indigo is usually sold in cakes of the extracted pigment, and has been for centuries. Woad was normally sold in balls, which are made by pulping the leaves, rolling them into balls, and letting them dry. To dye with either of these, you have to force the indigotin to break back down into indican. You have to do this by putting them in a room temp vat of something alkaline and removing oxygen. Under these conditions the indigotin will revert to indican and you can dye with it.
There are many ways to do this. Most of these methods are precise, complicated, and involve fucking around with precise amounts of fructose and yeast and calcium hydroxide or washing soda or a color remover/oxegen reducer known as thiourea dioxide. Humans are remarkably clever inventive little apes who love color and we've figured out many methods over the thousands of years we've been using indigo and woad.
However.
The simplest method? The very easiest that like never fails? Is to get a bucket of piss and let it go stale. Piss is alkaline, and has bacteria in it that remove oxygen. You get a bucket of piss, you add indigo or woad, and then you wait a bit for the indigotin to dissolve and you can dye the most heartbreakingly beautiful blues. And emerald greens and purples by overdyeing yellow or red.
Every other method humans have come up with to use indigo or woad are basically us trying to get around the Piss Bucket.
And yet, the Piss Bucket still remains undefeated as the simplest and most foolproof method.
Indigo, incidentally, is so gorgeous, lasting, and perfect a blue that even in modern days, we can't improve on it. We can synthesize the indigotin molecule, but we cannot improve on it.
Your modern jeans? Still dyed with indigo, though it's synthetically produced indigotin rather than derived from the indigo plant. But they still have to set up a fucking massive and tightly monitored and controlled indigo reduction vat to dye jeans.
baratheonpilled
gracieabrams
kianamaiart
amandla
germansingergirl
yousharknotpass
origamiaround
titsay
