moonpulseworkshop

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One of my recent completed displays featuring a pair of magicicadas (found naturally) on a bed of preserved moss with bok choy and cucumber blooms from my backyard and garden.

This piece started out as a thrifted 80's Seiko clock with a wonderful bubble glass frame. I sanded it down and stained the wood selectively with neon green and blue water based paints.

The colorful backing is from a 70's curtain panel that was gifted by a friend in some of their unneeded fabrics.

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Do you have a favorite planthopper? Cause I sure do, and it's the ghostly Acanalonia conica, or the Green Cone-Headed Planthopper. These little guys are the planthoppers I encounter most frequently around my yard. They range from almost imperceptible green to this ephemeral pale mint and I'd smooch every single one if they weren't so teeny. Voted "Most Likely to be the Planthopper Found in Random Ass Cobwebs Everywhere."

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A lil pair of Augochlora pura, the Pure Gold-Green Sweat Bee and one of my favorite tiny native solitary bees. If you live in eastern North America from Quebec to Florida, you've probably seen these little guys sucking up all of your electrolyte laden skin juices at one point or another. They're also voracious foragers for a ton of native plants!

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A couple closeups of my lycosid (wolf spider) display. I found both of these big beauties already passed in my garage. The one on the bottom was very damaged, and both of them were absolutely covered in lint and cobwebs. I gave the bottom one some prosthetic legs with sterling silver findings with a chunk of amethyst crystal cluster for a new abdomen.

The majority of my pieces use thrifted finds, the frame, vintage fabric backing, and some of the dried floral bits were picked up from my favorite local craft reuse shop here in Nashville, Smart Art. The amethyst cluster is also from a local rock shop, Jae's Gem Mine (right next door to the craft reuse).

The moss was pried from a dear friend's shady driveway and preserved, the ranunculus, marigold, roses, flax, dandelion, lavender, ground ivy, and caladium are from my own garden. The same moss friend gifted me a vintage Victorian dollhouse wallpaper book ages ago, so I used a page from it to line the shadowbox spacers.

This display is still looking for a new wall :D.

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A few of my most recent settings using all naturally deceased insects that I've found everywhere from my own yard to an Aldi automatic door entrance. The Polistes carolina wasp and Cylisticus sp. isopod have already made their way to new homes :D.

I create these with vintage thrifted finds, reused jars, pieces that I've collected and preserved from my own yard and garden, and pieces that I've found at my favorite craft re-use store.

Top L to R: Horned Passalus Beetle (Odontotaenius disjunctus, Clylisticidae isopod

Middle L to R: Green June Beetle (Cotinus Nitida), Giant Leaf-footed Bug (Acanthocephala declivis), Lycosidae Wolf Spiders

Bottom L to R: Brood XIX Periodical Magicicada wings, and Fine Backed Red Paper Wasp (Polistes carolina)

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This little plaque is my recent favorite thing that I've made. I've got a deep love for cicadas, they've always been incredibly nostalgic to me and I spend all spring waiting for the screams of my bois. This year, though, it was freaking magical. So many screams, you could hardly hear yourself think. I'd never witnessed a periodical emergence and was smack dab in the middle of The Great Southern Brood (Brood XIX) when everyone woke up and decided to party.

As a result, I ended up with many, many naturally deceased magicicadas and not all of them were in good enough shape to use whole. So, I saved and dried their wings (which always seem to be the one thing left behind after the rest of them has been munched on) and placed their abdomens back into the yard for the critters to enjoy or for them to decay back into the soil they waited for so many years in.

This plaque consists of the pendulum housing from a 70's vintage thrifted Verichron clock with a 100% wool backing sample, metal findings, and paint/inks from my local craft reuse shop. I sanded down the housing so that I could selective stain the wood in neon orange and blue. I created some stencils in Illustrator for the gilded accents on the front, as well. This little plaque is still waiting for a new home, and I'm already working on another similar setting (just waiting on finding the right thing to put it in).

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My favorite round friend, Gengar! Lately, I've made an embroidered patch with Gengar surrounded by plants and a vinyl sticker with more of their ghost Pokemon buddies.

I wanted to try my hand at making embroidered patches for a while, and I love how this one came out. I've been using precut shapes and designing within the dimensions, but for my next project I want to try contoured :D.

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A Cryptid Cafe kiss-cut vinyl sticker sheet that I finished up recently (though, the designs themselves have been waiting on a project for ages). We've got Nesspresso, Sasquatcha Latte, and Mothmanicano :D. There's 16 little stickers in total, 3 cryptids, 3 accessories (stirrer, green tea bag, and coffee beans), and 10 chubby lil pastel stars.

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A rainbow Mothman (complete with little Silver Bridge wings) that I made for some friends when we visited the Mothman Festival last year. I just love giving them hot pink eyes, huh?

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One of my favorite tiny moths, the Blackberry Looper.

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Spooky lil shroom with a couple of cheeky pals :D.

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Now that's a crow on a mission, beelining straight for my peanuts.

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I never did find these little ice creams at Aldi, but their memory lives on.

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A grumpy lil guy surrounded by their hoard of friends and treasures.

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All aboard the Halloween Express!

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A couple of my favorite cozy Mothmen :D.