*~*

when i was a kid, we had this variety of bleeding heart plant growing in our yard:

i thought they looked like translucent fairies wearing poofy pants. i was recently reminded of this & wanted to make a translucent fairy in poofy pants.

i love how the transparent parts turned out and absolutely want to experiment more with this technique. i printed the inner skeletal parts as normal, and then printed a one-walled shell with no infill out of transparent filament. i cut the shell open in the back and slid the skeleton inside. the outer layer of the head doesn't have eyes sockets, which makes the eyes hazy.

no leaves, but plenty of eyes.

inspired by me spacing out on a long drive & staring at trees. this happened earlier this year, and birches ended up growing leaves before i finished the doll.

I do not use any poisons or insecticides and I actively encourage my house spiders

the result is that her home is full of poison-resistant cockroaches and nothing else, while mine is a healthy bug ecosystem of Mostly Spiders and sometimes the junebugs who like to come die in my sink. and the moths that I have to rescue from Glimmer. but no roaches!

pest control is just such a scam and it troubles me deeply how normalized it is idk. people react with revulsion when I'm like "no I just encourage the house spiders and they do a pretty good job" bc they are classing house spiders as equally bad as every other bug and that's TERRIBLE bc bugs are TERRIBLE due to they're YUCKY

rather than like. some bugs will leave you alone. some bugs want to eat you or your house. other bugs pose health and safety hazards bc they want to infest your cornflakes. a healthy crop of house spiders will prevent all of these from becoming a problem much of the time, barring extreme circumstances

I didn't say I was virtuous. I have lived in apartments that have roach problems.

also to speak to your tags: I am disabled! I'm deeply familiar with the phenomenon you're describing and this post is not doing that.

happy 20 year anniversary of Neil banging out the tunes!

though every rat is special, it's a wonderful and unusual thing for their accomplishments to be remembered and cherished by so many people so many years later. we're all so fortunate to know about the rat who banged out the tunes!

thank you to all the people who sent me reference photos of their beloved rats for this piece!!! credits under the cut!

File your taxes for free | Internal Revenue Service (irs.gov)