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Another ATC! This one took forever, but I'm kind of happy with the result. It was inspired by finding a shimmery dark green in my advent calendar, and, well... What to do with that? Old glass was my first thought. Also, two different light sources (one cold, one warm), just to make my life difficult...



In the end, I actually managed to use all the four different types of shimmer and glitter from my advent calendar in the picture! (Shimmery transparent white on the window and the glass parts of the thermometer-weather-thingy, shimmery green on the bottles and the leaves (because why wouldn't those shimmer? XD), golden gel pen (on the jewelry, thermometer-thingy and fire-thingy), and silver gel pen on the rock samples - I guess those are ore minerals, then...) It feels kind of decadent to have a designated old-glass-watercolor, but hey, I love drawing old technology and lab equipment (and old glass often does have this color - not because people dyed it but because they had no way of removing the iron impurities), so I absolutely needed that one, I just didn't know it yet!

( List of art supplies behind the cut. )

This was a drawing challenge: over at kakao-karten.de, there's a thread with weekly drawing challenges for one's sketchbook. This week, the task was to draw various objects that accompany you. Sure, I can do that! XD



Shown in this sketch:
One of my MANY MANY MANY puukkos. (Stacked birchbark handle with metal end caps; drop priofile, though that's not really visible from this perspective and at this level of scribbly-ness.)
One of my MANY MANY MANY travel watercolor boxes. (I refrained from adding paintbrushes, pencils, and pens - imagine my bag to contain a lot more art stuff than this! Also, yes, a watercolor box in monochrome looks kind of sad, but it couldn't be helped.)
One of my MANY MANY MANY travel chess sets. (No, I don't go anywhere without a chessboard. Not without chess pieces, either, but I was simply too lazy to draw those they would have distracted from the composition... Also, the wood of this set is actually much more reddish, but never mind.)
One of my MANY MANY MANY sketchbooks. (It's a new one that I received as a gift in my advent calendar from Taddi. Ironically, most of the art supplies I used to draw this picture - with the exception of the Liquitex marker and the book this sketch is in - are also from this advent calendar. It was a good opportunity to test the new art supplies!)

Not shown in this sketch:
The boring stuff. (Keys, wallet, feminine hygiene products, though in hindsight I almost regret not adding the latter.)



Materials:
- suuuper awesome sketchbook from antaresnox; a beige double page. (Yes, I deliberately used very thick black outlines and positioned the objects in a way to minimize the visual impact of the black bookbinding yarn... XD)
- Acrylic pens: Marabu YONO in black and white; Liquitex acrylic marker in Unbleached Titanium
- Glitter gel pens: Ohuhu Gel Ink Pen in gold and silver (on the knife)
- waterbrush (not in the photo)

EPIC FASHION WIN



Got these today in my advent calendar from Eleisis. Yep, that's pink resin with a lot of glitter - the timeless classic for rune charms. (Clip earrings because I don't have ear piercings.) I am in awe. Clearly, Eleisis understands my style of thinking very well... When in doubt, go for pink glitter! The runes are dagaz and raido, chosen for excellent reasons. :D I absolutely LOVE them!

My advent calendar of this year has actually arrived some time ago, but only now I've finally managed to unpack it and put it up... In the meantime, of course, the whole package has been carefully guarded by Drachi.

This is Drachi:



Drachi is a beautiful (handmade! wow!!!) dragon. Drachi lives at Burg Ellerstein (that's Ellerstein Castle).



The castle unfortunately doesn't have a decent moat available (I'd have to put it in the bathroom for that, but I'll spare you those pictures XD), but takes up the living room table, but I'm still very impressed by the proud walls and the working drawbridge!



Burg Ellerstein is also very cozy inside, including an LED fireplace and beautiful decorations!



I was somewhat horrified to discover that Drachi had apparently had the opportunity to escape and raid the Louvre in the meantime, but I can of course live with the fact that the Mona Lisa is now hanging at my home. Very appropriate, that. It's just too bad that our telescope (in the background) is a bit too bulky to fit on the castle roof, but you can't have everything ;)

Of course, I've already photographed all the beautifully wrapped parcels that were stored inside the castle: each one is a work of art! But I think, in order not to overload this post, I will only show them on the respective days. :)

But anyway, a HUGE thank you to Eleisis!!!

Just realized there's a significant backlog in photos of the AWESOME Advent calendar that Ismael made for me! So... I'm going to change that now. I had already posted the awesome little room in a shoebox with the Dev cardboard stand. During the course of December, more awesomeness like that followed...

( Pictures behind the cut. )

I'm sooooooo happy! :D

Merry Christmas, to all who celebrate – and a wonderful time to absolutely everyone!!!

I haven’t posted much lately – I’m very busy with science. This is a good thing, of course. Still, I really regret not showing you all the woooonderful things I’ve received during the Advent time. I had three Advent calendars this year (from smilestack, linaly, and Sam_Linnifer) and also received some lovely unrelated Christmas mail… So, this is going to be a picspam post – you have been warned. (Pictures are behind the cut.)

I can’t show everything I received, although all my gifts were awesome: there was a lot of fanart involving my own characters (YAY!!!), tea (I’m drowning in tea!), chocolate, other fascinating foodstuff, a virtual museum tour of a mineralogical exhibition, conducted by my own characters (double YAY!!!), and art and craft supplies to last me a lifetime. :D Also, I made some stuff for other people, but that will have to go into a separate post. This one is just for awesome handmade things I received!

Sooo - these craft projects were all made by other people for me; I’m giving the appropriate credits, of course… And I’m amazed (and, in some cases, shocked) how well people know me, my taste, and my occasionally odd preferences.

( Here are the pictures: )

THANK YOU!

I had promised to show the rest of my wonderful advent calendar - all the lovely handmade things by serenity025 who really went all out.

LOOK AT THIS SUNDIAL! :D :D :D



I think it's Moss Agate O'Clock, but I can't actually be sure, because, oh wait... XDD

Completely unreasonable? Oh, yes. I love how this piece - and actually much of the calendar - playfully transcends the boundaries of reasonableness. This is, of course, fully intentional: no worries, serenity025 knows how sundials work. XD It's just that, in the world of Kolthainn, interestingly malfunctioning sundials are a major plot point. I think she nailed it: a black sundial that doesn't display shadows perfectly fits a world where "50 Stones of Grey" is a perfectly reasonable geology textbook the story. (Also, I'm not a reasonable person, so. XD)

More pictures, including an overview of All!!!The!!!Scrunchies!!!, behind the cut.

( advent calendar pictures of awesomeness! )

Again, I have to thank serenity025, the nice person responsible for my advent calendar this year! :D This is... A bag for my paintbrushes. I'm impressed by all the awesome things she sewed for me - and I think after Christmas I'll have to post an overwiew with All!The!Scrunchies! - but this... Woah.



She chose an absolutely beautiful fabric, I love it! :D And it's impressive craft, just look at it when it's open! (She was so nice to already include a paintbrush, and it's a nice one, too!)



...yeah, I simply had to show off. I have THE BEST advent calendar. :D I just spent a very pleasant quarter of an hour, sorting paintbrushes into this bag, putting a small watercolor pad into the side bag (very convenient design, that!), adding pencil and eraser for good measure... So now it's a travel kit ready for use! :D I just hope 2021 will be a year in which I get to, you know, travel again... XD

...but THIS IS AWESOME!!!

Today's art is not by me, but by the wonderful serenity025 who is the nice soul responsible for my advent calendar of this year! :D She drew a wonderful ATC featuring Dev!





Aaaaannnnd... Not only is this an AWESOME drawing (featuring lovely details like a fountain pen, crystals, and a math-y chart), but she also wrote me she wanted to contribute a book title! That's a Kolthainn thing: it's canon that Dev has some really weird titles on his color-sorted bookshelf. See the (in)famous "50 Stones of Grey" in the background? XDD (Also, nice detail that Dev's erotica are right next to "Minerals", which is likely something his fellow students will want to borrow occasionally. LOL this is VERY much in the spirit of things!)

Anyway - Dev is reading something called "Game of Stones". Which is AWESOME. Up to now, this book did not exist in Kolthainn, but now it does. (And it's a huge bestseller, too.) I have to write it. (Yes, Kolthainn works a bit like that: if it were a commercial project something like "fanfic for fanart for origfic" would be an intellectual property nightmare, but hey, it's all fandom, so no one minds. Also, going by what serenity025 wrote, I can safely assume she wants "her" book title to become canon.) Game of Stones... She did not provide me with any additional info about this masterpiece, but in my mind it's a crossover between geology textbook (simply because Dev owns mostly geology textbooks and porn), Go book (you play that with stones, right? Right. XD) and, well, Game of Thrones. I did not watch that series, which is actually good: any fic I produce is very unlikely to infringe on anyone's intellectual property there; I'll just add boobs, dragons and gratuitous violence?!? (That's what I got from the trailers, anyway.)

...heh, I even have an idea of how to write the beginning. :D

Life's good! :D

- My robin postcards FINALLY arrived from the print shop! I can start to write! :D

- I had lovely mail! A large letter from yhlee, and I'm irrationally pleased with that tiny blue watercolor sketchbook... SO CUTE! And a fascinating mushroom card from ursula. THANK YOU! :D

- Mysteriously, I received an Etsy order from Korea today. Mysteriously, because... I ordered that in April. It was sent in April, too - just took a while to reach me. And I'm super pleased about the address label in beautiful calligraphy! Granted, that Etsy store is specialized on calligraphy supplies so they'd better make nice address labels (LOL), but still...! I'm going to keep that one. It's a piece of art. (Hell on the postal system, though.)

- Chess software! I upgraded to the new ChessBase 16. Pricey, but I'm one of the few people with an actual use for a chess database system, so... LOL. I also bought some training software. They publish ridiculous amounts of chess DVDs but it's usually good stuff, so, while I'm busy wasting spending money, why not?

- Used a Black Friday sale to get some new Roman Szmal watercolors. I didn't have the ones that were released this autumn yet, and 30% off is a good deal, so... More colors. There can never be enough watercolors... Yes, I'm hopeless.

- I played a game of chess against an extremely rude opponent. XD It was funny. He blundered a piece. He used the button to ask if he can take the move back, wrote the message "misclicked". Okay... Not likely (there are typical "misclick" mistakes, like letting go of a piece one square too early, but this was not the case here) but I let him take the move back. He didn't bother to thank me... Just put the piece on another square, where it was also blundered. Oooo-kay. We played on. He asked to take back another move. I thought that was getting ridiculous, clicked "no". He started insulting me. XDDD Chess players. You simply have to love them.

I joined the Multi-Fandom Postcard Exchange a while ago, and received my confirmation in the physical mail today. That means I can start sending fanart postcards to people there! :D I already drew two, one for The Queen's Gambit (because, hell, I just needed an excuse to draw fanart for that show), and one for Anastasia (simply because I grew up with that one and loved it). And I want to do Sailor Moon, too, for nostalgia's sake... AHAHAHAHA.

- ADVENT CALENDARS! I have two calendars this year, a "large" one (with the days 1 to 24), and a "small" one (with the Advent sundays and the 24th). See the pictures!





This is the "large" one, with a pretty hexagonal main calendar and multiple large mysterious packages... Doesn't look very pretty on the photo, but the design is actually VERY nice: black, with iridescent green shimmer. Unfortunately, my camera can't deal with the effect. You'll just have to believe me it's very pretty indeed!





And this is the "small" one, with the numbers written in "code" (AHAHA not really, but a nice imitation anyway). I could already open one of the parcels today, and I received...

INK! Diamine, "Smoke on the Water". It's, apparently, turquoise with red effect, and I can't wait to try it! Unfortunately, all my fountain pens with broad nibs (effect inks need broad nibs) have other inks inside right now... I just don't have enough fountain pens. But... AWESOME! I looked at this review, and really, the ink looks awesome! :D

WHEEEE! :D