If you guys follow the latest social media crazes at all, you may have heard of "Dubai chocolate", a relatively new chocolate flavor invention involving pistachio and crunchy bits, (in)famous not only for its high price but also, unfortunately, for tasting really reeeaaaallly good. Well. Anyway, Boyfriend got me a bar as a gift, and I really loved the stuff, but it's (obviously) too expensive to buy on a regular basis. So, we decided to make our own instead!



( Ingredients and recipe behind the cut. )

I'm glad to inform you that the experiment was successful: while our result doesn't quite look all that professional (we will need to practice more, ahahaha), it tastes exactly like the original.

Another postcard for someone on postcrossing - this time, it's a combination of drawing, painting, and papercut. It has transparent windows! The book page, inkwell, ink blob and large leaves are see-through.



Materials:
Watercolor paper: Florence watercolor paper, smooth, white, 200gsm. This was a bit of a compromise: it's the thinnest possible paper for watercoloring, but the thickest possible paper for reasonable papercutting. (Still: not much detail possible.)
Transparent paper: Folia, 115 gsm (I chose the thicker variety, for obvious reasons), light green.
Fineliners: Staedtler, different sizes.
Acrylic pens: FlySea, white and black.
Watercolors: various brands, no idea which was what. It was not my watercolor box. I'm not at home and didn't grab the box in my bag when there was a perfectly good one open on the table.
Knife: snap-off utility knife. Cheap but good. XD Seriously, it performed really well (as in: non-wobbly, good angle, and ergonomic in my hand) but it's a no-name thingy, no manufacturer printed on or anything.
Varnish: LUKAS spray varnish, satin gloss. (Added to protect the watercolors before gluing everything together.)
Spray glue: Ghiant Hightac, an ancient can. Oh well, it came out a bit yellowed and blotchy but it still worked... Somehow.

More pictures (of the papercutting and of what the card looks like with backlighting) behind the cut.

( Pictures! )

I'll definitely make more cards with this technique. It's so much fun! :D

Literally. A "postcard" (though I'll have to send it in an envelope because I don't think the paper is going to survive otherwise) for someone on Postcrossing. This person likes snails. Did I have a store-bought snail postcard? No. Am I able to draw one when I have to? Kind of. So, here's a giant snail... XD



Materials:
- paper: this is on an interesting handmade watercolor paper from India, called "Wanderings", in light brown. Layers on top of each other are not really possible, so the paper is mostly suited for more "sketch-like" work, but I like the effects the color creates on this a lot.
- fineliners: Copic multiliner 1.0 in black, Faber Castell PITT artist pen S in dark sepia
- watercolors: Schmincke Chromoxidgrün stumpf (PG17), White Nights Indanthrene Blue (PB60) and Mars Brown (PBr6tr)
- acrylic pen: Posca in white

The next (very very very) poisonous plant, I'm afraid. We have so many of those here. XD



Materials:
- suuuper awesome sketchbook; a red page (I'm using those up disproportionately) this time
- Acrylic pens: Flysea Acrylic Painter Extra Fine in black and white; Amsterdam Acrylic Marker in Yellowish Green; Liquitex Acrylic Marker in Cadmium Red Deep Hue and Phthalocyanine Green blue shade; Uni Posca PC-5M in white
- waterbrush

Another page in the lovely chess sketchbook from antaresnox got filled today! I love oleander, it smells so nice. Of course, it is very poisonous, so even touching the stuff is a very bad idea, but... :D



Materials:
- suuuper awesome sketchbook; a light pink page this time
- Acrylic pens: Flysea Acrylic Painter Extra Fine in black and white; Amsterdam Acrylic Marker in Yellowish Green, Permanent Green Light, Permanent Red Violet Light, and Ultramarine; Uni Posca PC-5M in white
- waterbrush

Two animal postcards for people on Postcrossing.





Both cards are made with acrylic pens (various brands) on watercolor paper (JAXON Aquarell Postkarten, and by the way, those suck, I am only using the box up so they are finally gone). I like that the acrylic pens behave almost like watercolors when you spread the color with a wet paintbrush but are waterproof after drying. I used spray varnish on the cards anyway, to protect them in the mail.

Triple drabble for a drabble exchange. :) As if I could avoid a prompt involving a blacksmith... It had to happen. XD Also, the general feedback on this consists of variations on "so cute", which I guess means that I don't write what I read. ;)

The Hammer (300 words) by EllerWrites
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Dragon, Knight - Character, Blacksmith, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Triple Drabble, Fantasy, Dragons
Summary: A tiny dragon covets a blacksmith's hammer. A knight covets a blacksmith.

...for people on Postcrossing. Very different techniques, because I enjoy some variety.



This tree is a classic fineliner sketch painted with watercolors. Most of the drawing was done in the park during lunch time, but I did the last color layer later. (Had to let things dry!) Of course, I used spray varnish in the end, so the thing is sort-of-safe to mail.



And this little underwater scene is a combination of acrylic paints (mostly smeared with my fingers, because that gives me more control than paintbrushes, and besides, it's fun!) and acrylic markers.

No worries, this nice black-and-red locomotive is not in use anymore (I mean, you never know in Northern Germany, but... this is kind of old-fashioned even by local standards XD), it just... stands there as some kind of historical monument thingy. Also, nope, I can't draw technology, especially not when I have to be fast (there was nowhere to sit where I was sketching, and bright sunlight I was trying to avoid; indeed, I only did the black brush pen drawing there but had to do most of the shading and highlights later, at home) and I'm not doing a perspective sketch first. Flowers are easier - when you get a curve or the proportions slightly wrong, that's just nature, but you can't cheat like that with tech! XD I simplified quite a bit, too - only drew the largest shapes but left the smaller stuff out, though I don't doubt it's crucial for actually operating this machine. Hey, this is not supposed to be a technical blueprint... XD But, yeah, still having fun with that lovely chess sketchbook!



Materials:
- suuuper awesome sketchbook; a red page again - I'm really enjoying this bright red paper!
- Markers: Faber Castell Pitt big brush in Black and Cold Grey III (they don't sell the latter anymore, which is tragic); Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pen brush in White (which SUCKS; the other brush pens from this line are all awesome but the white one is super transparent and does not cover anything - I deliberately only used it for shading here, which is why I needed two different white pens)
- Acrylic pen: Flysea Acrylic Painter Extra Fine in white (which you already know I love; despite being super-cheap it's my favorite white acrylic pen)

We all like cute animal pictures, right? Right. XD Anyway, yesterday, I had a bit of a surprise:



Yes, that's a hare. (If you've never seen a hare: imagine a giant rabbit with slightly off body proportions, lighter eyes, and black-tipped ears. But mainly, you can tell them apart because a hare like this is really f*cking large, think medium-sized dog. LOL) In the middle of the day - and it's not the mating season for them. Oh, and in a park populated by humans, too. The thing is, usually, you don't see hares up close. (Unless you're a hunter and/or very patient.)

They are there, and they're not officially counted as a threatened species anymore, either, but you just don't see them, because a) they're nocturnal (unless it's mating season), b) they're extremely shy (and smarter than rabbits, and they remove themselves immediately if anything approaches), and c) they're really f*cking fast (Wikipedia says, "Hares can reach maximum speeds of 35 mph (56 km/h)^[68] in short distances of approximately 90 meters, and a top speed of 50 mph (80 km/h) for about 20 meters.^[69]"), which means that once they've noticed you, typically, all you see is that famous zigzag blur. (They change the direction while running in order to confuse predators.)

Admittedly, the Rhododendronpark (in Bremen) is kind of quiet during lunchtime, but really, a hare deciding this is a good place to feed during the day is kind of unusual, and a human getting close enough to get a picture with a "normal" compact camera (no tele objective) is just unlikely... I was actually kind of worried in case the animal was ill. But nope...



Sure enough, as soon as I began taking pictures, the animal heard me (when focusing, the camera makes a beeping noise that I can't seem to turn off - maybe I'll have to destroy the beepy speaker thingy physically, because animals really dislike this sh*t) and decided to leave in a hurry - which, of course, is exactly the behavior you would expect when its sasse (sorry, I don't know the English word - you know, the earth hollow that hares fixate on) isn't anywhere close, so it can't simply crouch down and play dead.



Ultra-slow (by hare standards; I still only got two pictures) zigzag run! XD

I wasn't paying attention to the plants at the time, but in the first picture, you see the likely explanation why I got so close in the first place: poppies. (These seed capsules are unmistakeable.) What a lovely place for a hare to get high... *headdesk* (Scientific note: no, that's not the poppy you use to make drugs; it would be kind of illegal to plant that in a public park. But even something with not enough opiate content to work on humans would likely be sufficient for a smaller mammal.) So, um, that hare was perfectly healthy and well fed (slightly overweight, even) but with a seriously slowed-down perception and reaction time due to, um, botanicals. Great. I mean, I would love to pretend I'm just that fast, but...

...we all know it's not possible to out-race a hare by fair means, right? You have to out-wit them. Maybe you know the famous story of The Hare and The Hedgehog, but apparently, drugging the poor beast will also work. ;)