[e017] Productive Weekend

I had a really excellent weekend, catching up on some much needed work hours, finishing up some older and previously abandoned projects, and getting a chance to hang out with some friends before the semester has a chance to consume me. On Saturday one of my oldest friends was having a house warming party, and within five minutes of walking in the front door her mom had loaded me with four shots. What a welcoming! I really enjoyed not being a wallflower for once, and I had to laugh at myself for blacking out/falling asleep in her hottub. At least I didn't drift away too far...

Sunday was equally as wonderful. I went over to an artist's friend's house to work on making a bootleg toy, and to collaborate with him on another. Within the next weeks I really hope that we can set up a photo shoot for his "girls with toys" series, which includes a card and potentially a toy crafted after the model. It'll be the second trading card series that my face will be on, but more importantly: I get to spend more time with him and play with toys! It's like being a kid again, but a thousand times better. Once we make the molds for said toys and get the first resin duplica out I'll post some pictures up here. Do I need to even say I made an insect head for one of the figures? We also have some fun plans in the making of modifying some furbies for our own devious purposes.

As far as art goes, I made a Saturnalia MN pendant to pimp out, and I plan on making a ton more over the next weeks to hand out as promotions during larger events. They're somewhat eco-friendly as they're made from bottle caps I've been saving up for two years now:


(Arrogant Bastard is a fine choice for a bottle cap necklace)


(Showing off my necklace and my glow in the dark sunglasses)


(My hair is huge)

If you haven't checked out their music video yet, now is an excellent time to do so:



And when you're done with that, go to Saturnalia's facebook page and like them.

What else, what else? I made some Super Mario mushroom knobs for our Good Will rescued entertainment center. They're really simple, with machine screws baked into the back and a gloss glaze coat that makes them look very ceramic.





Now, if only today were nearly as productive as the last two I would be set. Instead I need to scuttle away and read another chapter from another textbook. Woe is the student life.

[e016] It's Hard to Scream with a Throat Full of Glass

After a satisfying nine hours of work yesterday, I needed a happy break from the tedium that had become photoshopping insects. EJ and I went to Safeway to pick up some milk for my necessary dose of coffee in the mornings, and while we wandered around wide-eyed as usual, I fell in love with a pair of sunglasses. I knew, right then and there, that they needed to glow in the dark. I also knew that I needed to paint something else on them, though I had no idea what.

It's now almost 4:30 in the morning and I'm still up, painting while going back and forth listening to Disma and Combichrist. I can't tell if I don't want to sleep, if I had too much caffeine earlier in the evening, or if my Muse is screaming so harshly in my ear that sleeping never stood a chance of meeting me tonight. Perhaps it's a mix of all three.

Some of my hair is UV reactant now, and I want these sunglasses to match that. I'm tempted to redo my nails again and make them glow in the dark. I'm not sure what spurred my recent obsession with things that glow in the night, but I'm going to take full advantage of it while it lasts.

As for the creature on my glasses? It's a glorious earwig, decidedly yesterday's insect of the day. The Order is Dermaptera, meaning "skin wing", and can be easily recognized by the pincer-like cerci at the bottom of the abdomen. Contrary to popular urban legend, they do not crawl into your ear and lay their eggs inside your brain - that would be, after all, a little bit too cool for reality. Rather, they eat plant matter, be it dead and decaying or live, though some species are predatory. They also look awesome painted on glow-in-the-dark sunglasses.

[e014] Overwhelmed

Minus the cigarettes in this image, this is how I've felt the past several days. Yesterday I spent over twelve hours working on a final project submission for an online class, and this morning I woke up excessively early (after little sleep) to prepare for a quiz. Our teacher has offered some extra credit for the first exam, so I want to work on that before staggering into work looking like a crack coffee fiend. I've fallen hours and hours behind at my job, so it looks like a good portion of my vacation will be spent trying to make-up for lost time.

Oh, did I say vacation? Why, yes. That is correct. This Friday night EJ and I are leaving for Connecticut to visit my brother and his lovely wife. I'm crossing my fingers for a punk show, a space metal show, hiking, being a beach bum, looking for snakes, going on more insect-massacre sprees, and wandering about New York. Also, let's not forget one of the most important facets: gratuitous amounts of photos.

Looks like my time is up. Back to the coffee pot! (It's the student equivalent of the Bat Mobile.)

[e013] 1,001 New Ways to Stalk Me

For when I have nothing useful to say, or when I am not feeling particularly articulate:

Tumblr is the place to lurk.

[e012] The face of insomnia.

Sometimes, when I can't sleep and all coherent thought has long past, I try to make the most ridiculous face I can muster:



It's about then that the demons of sleep acknowledge that they have a potential problem on their hands and release me into dream-land. Sometimes while I'm still conscious. Jerks.

[e011] Not rinsing my dirty mouth with soap.

(gifted by a friend from Sweet Soap Treat.)

[e010] Raising Butterflies

About three weeks ago a coworker and I took off from work early to run around campus and collect insects. This is fast becoming a weekly hobby for me, even if the outside temperature does feel like an oven set to broil. Not only is jumping around in the bushes with a net a great way to meet interesting people, but I love looking at the diversity of the things we collect together. On this particular day that we collected, however, I did find something that didn't go straight into a vial of ethanol or a kill jar: two queen butterfly caterpillars.

At first I thought they might be monarch butterfly larvae, but after some fast google searches I found out the difference - the queen butterfly larvae have an extra row of "horns". I've never successfully raised butterflies on my own, so I was hesitant to take them in as a pet project. What changed my mind was that they were both already in their fifth instar (a time in-between molting and growing), which is their last instar before forming their chrysalis. The other turning point was that the bush I found them on was devoid of their normal food source, and both would have potentially died, anyway.


(The second caterpillar - note the three sets of horns and the small, yellow aphids on the branch)

The first caterpillar was larger and formed its chrysalis within a week. The second one, while in its last stage, still needed more food to grow. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any more living desert milkweed plans and thought for sure it was going to starve to death. It got smaller and smaller every day, up until I spotted three more bushes (covered in hemiptera such as aphids) by the light rail station. The diet of the queen butterfly caterpillar consists of milkweed leaves and blooms, so finding three healthy, blossoming plants made me super happy. Overnight the caterpillar seemed to double in size, and within a few days it also formed its chrysalis:



Yesterday night my fiancé and I noticed it starting to darken up, and this morning we awoke to a beautifully emerged butterfly.





Both butterflies were released in memory of my father- the first two days before Father's Day, and the second this afternoon. :)

[e006] Silly forgotten drawings, part 1.

I found this when I was cleaning during finals week:

"Pizza is red
chees is yellow
the spises are colorful
and so are you.

Love, Rebecca"

Even if I couldn't spell as a child... I was still awesome.

[e004] "I went there because it sounded cool."

While this break hasn't been filled with as many exciting insect collection trips as I hoped, I did spend a few minutes hunkered down in front of a map trying to decide where I wanted to go in the [near] future. That was when I realized that a lot of the places I wanted to visit I had selected because they sounded cool.

For example: Coffeepot, Hellsgate Wilderness, Santa Claus, Cash Mine, Hidden Treasure Mine... I mean, who wouldn't want to go to Cash Mine? Or Hidden Treasure Mine? And how neat would that look on a locality label? I'm still debating if this is a good thing or not, to go somewhere just because it has a fun name. This new obsession started with Bumble Bee, which is where I went collecting about two weeks ago. The original plan was to go to Horsethief Canyon, but after getting such a late start and still having to finish off Christmas shopping I picked a closer trail: Black Canyon National Recreational Trail.

The trail itself is 79 miles long, "stretching from the Sonoran Desert lowlands in Phoenix to the high grasslands in Prescott Valley." Edwin and I, of course, did not and could not possibly walk the entire thing, though we were content with snooping around for beetles and then walking a good two miles afterwords. I don't think words can describe how beautiful the landscape was, even on such a potentially dreary day. The wind was like ice, clouds covered the sky, and the rain came sporadically. We were lucky to have packed raincoats... and even so, nothing could defeat my overwhelming sense of happiness.



How could I not be happy around a face like that?





Or walking around a place like this?

My absolute favorite thing about Arizona is that one doesn't have to travel far in order to find someplace scenic. Earlier in the week we had taken an afternoon to trek North Mountain, where we stumbled upon... Santa Cactus?



(Please note the coals for eyes.) I told him that this year I wanted a GPS for Christmas, and when I got home I traveled back in time three days and ordered one from Amazon. I think he used some sort of hypnosis on me, though I'll never be able to prove it.

Directly across from our spiny friend there was also a heavily decorated mesquite tree. The "top" - in quotations, because this was a broad/general area - had a solar-powered star that I couldn't successfully photograph. While many of the ornaments dangling from the branches were store bought it looked like an equal number were hand made. My favorite was easily this little Cupid:



He shot Edwin and I, and now we're even more studpidly in love, which I didn't even think was possible.

Well... it's about that time to scamper off to bed. Hopefully the dog will relinquish my pillow by the time I'm ready to fall asleep.