Mangoes Art Pit

Hi, I’m Mango, Nex, or Daina depending on how you know me (no preference for how I’m referred to and OP works fine 90% of the time). I am pretty consistent about posting just my own art here, but on occasion I’ll reblog others’ art or post about my houseplants or the local birds.

I currently live in the USA but I’ve applied for Lithuanian generational/birthright citizenship and the goal is to move to the EU as soon as I’m able to.

I am 21+ but this blog will always be SFW. I’m sure I’ve sworn here before but it’s minimal. I don’t really believe in DNI lists but I will happily block anyone being hateful. I don’t mind NSFW or gimmick blogs interacting, if anything I think it’s hilarious.

At the time of posting this I have not been on Tumblr for all that long so I’m going to make an effort to be much better about keeping things organized from now on.

Commission Pages:

Neocities

VGen

Artistree

Tags I Use:

Another one! Unfortunately the legibility is not great, what I should have done is increase the contrast on the character’s colors since the string IS accurate but it’s got shadows and highlights influencing it as well. Now I know for the future.

Actually obsessed with DMC’s semi metallic thread, it’s not even a little bit scratchy and it’s SO pretty. 10/10 will use again.

I have some. Weird news?

Remember how my venus flytrap was like unsalvageably rotten? Well there was this little baby one I cut off the main plant and just threw on a piece of damp paper towel in an old spice jar because it had no chance at all of surviving.

Another bracelet done! I am really pleased with this one and honestly I have no idea how I got it done so fast.

Also exciting news! I got on VGen through a friend’s code and I’ve finally got everything set up INCLUDING the bracelets! Everything’s staying waitlisted until August (busy due to Art Fight) but I would love it if y’all could look around: https://vgen.co/IHaveTheMangoes

And probably also proofread, a friend already caught one spelling mistake in my ToS.

ALSO also, I got a new raw photo editing program and I’m OBSESSED. It’s RawTherapee and it’s free and open source. Just as good (if not better) than anything Adobe. SO much better than trying to wrangle it in Affinity which is what I was doing before.

I have learned DMC CANNOT be trusted with their shipping times. They promised 5-7 days. It took 15. For a 2$ order. Like it literally took a full week just to process the order and then it sat in a warehouse in my area for another week. USPS what are we doing.

Today I actually was so desperate I went BACK to my local craft store and got the string for bracelet #2 as well as ‘close enough’ matches for the string I was waiting on in my order because there was a decent chance my order got lost in transit and these are time sensitive for Art Fight.

Well the missing string finally arrived this evening. So there’s that.

Also VERY GOOD NEWS! While I can’t work on the bracelets for too long right now without screwing up my neck, I have physical therapy scheduled on Friday! High hopes since it’s a place a friend has gone to before and really liked. Took me like an hour to fill out the intake form.

Link to these characters below:

Absolutely cranking out art for Art Fight and having a FANTASTIC time.

Will definitely be retaking pictures for the two traditional pieces because I have learned I really do need the tripod for that one. Considering my ISO and aperture are pretty inflexible when documenting artwork, I can only make my shutter speed so fast.

Not having much luck on the bracelet for the event, DMC has sent me zero updates on my order and I may have to harass them because it’s been almost a full week now.

Links to all the characters shown here below:

Back on my BS! I actually went through the effort of finding a DMC color chart online and picked my colors that way, which was REALLY helpful. Regretfully, I still had to place an online order for two colors because my local craft store was out of one and I accidentally bought 3836 instead of 3863.

Also very excited to use metallic thread! It can be kinda scratchy so a lot of people don’t want it in bracelets but this recipient is cool with it.

Red lines on the pixel art are just my personal notation for where I need to weave in and cut a color so I don’t have a huge float.

Link to this character’s Art Fight profile:

Apparently the true theme for this blog is that I just pick the most insanely tedious fiber arts ever. But it’s worth it because this cabled sweater pattern slaps immensely. One more repeat of the middle diamond and then I get to do shaping for the arm holes. Small life update below.

Really on a roll this week, I finally got through the Void of single color cross stitch. I’m actually not sure if I want to follow through and make it my serious profile picture on my serious social media, it is exceptionally hard to get a good photo of cross stitch and I think the effect gets lost on such a small scale.

All finished! I will absolutely be doing more with splicing colors together, it’s a really nice effect and will help out a lot. DMC has so many colors but somehow I still manage to feel limited by them on occasion.

To be clear, I don’t base my self-worth on numbers. HOWEVER, I want to be an artist as a career and getting traction MATTERS.

So tell me why the SAME VIDEOS I made last year are doing absolutely awful this year even though I’m making them higher quality because I have a better mic and a better idea of what I’m doing.

Whole thing’s a scam. They change the algorithms, tell NO ONE, and expect their content creators to churn out content to figure out how it all works again. I went from getting routinely 2k views to NOTHING. It’s not just TikTok either, even SHORTS is doing me dirty.

I know the videos themselves aren’t bad, because the engagement has been good! I know what the pattern is supposed to be, these should be DOING WELL.

I don’t know why I bother. Maybe I should just stick to long-form content that I actually care about making. I enjoy posting on Tumblr because it doesn’t feel like this hellish game of chance. My therapist said I’m doing all I can online at this point and if I really want to be doing more then I should prioritize in-person networking.

Spent pretty much the entire day yesterday taking nice photos of my paintings with the nice camera and then editing them. There’s definitely still some small edits I need to make, I don’t have good lighting equipment so the bottom left corner is a TINY bit darker. Will be opening up a print shop once I order some test prints to make sure the vendor is good, I’m very excited :)

Crappy phone photos below for a fun comparison (it’s pretty subtle the difference is mostly lighting).

This project is definitely a marathon and not a sprint, but I’ve finally gotten far enough that I can get a better picture of the ‘right’ side. It’s definitely going faster now that I’ve figured out the rhythm of the design a little more but we’re still talking like. Two inches an hour.

Very cool technique! Looking forward to doing more (with wool instead of cotton) in the future. The material makes a pretty significant difference in design legibility.