Yet again, it has been a hot minute since I have updated my blog. My health combined with life circumstances, plus depression, meant that I was not in a space to be able to write or make art for quite some time. I’m now on new medication for the depression which is actually working for me and not causing intolerable side effects (a first for me!), plus demands on my time and energy have eased up, so I have been working on art projects involving resin and embroidery.

I have mostly backed off from all meta social media due to their support of fascism, and am spending my social media time on discord, or on BlueSky, so if you want to follow what I am doing on social media, my BlueSky account is the best place to do that. I will be posting little updates as I go along, even when I don’t have the spoons to do up a whole blog post.

Given the dumpster fire that is the USA (where I unfortunately am stuck), it has been profoundly good for my mental health to be back to making some art and playing with a new medium (resin). I waited to share any of it to my blog, until I was certain that I was going to be able to continue making art, and I would not just be posting a couple WIP posts that then drifted off a cliff. Plus, that relieved pressure to update my blog, and allowed me to just focus on the art when I had the energy.

But, my blog is important to me, and I do love sharing what I make, so I am resuming posting here. I would love to promise you that I will be updating 100% consistently from now on, but the reality is that with my health, lots of things can prevent that, so I’m just going to hope for the best, and assure you that that is, as always, my goal.

UV Resin Art

I first got some UV resin supplies and played around with making a couple pieces back in 2022, when I made a resin sigil pendant for my cat. That effort is documented in First Try Making UV-Resin Sigil Jewelry. But, I had other things going on, so those supplies got tucked away and I didn’t touch them until last summer (2024), when I made a couple pendants to help with a different medical situation.

Now that my depression is controlled enough to allow me to create art again, and I was feeling inspired, I got out those supplies, bought some more molds and other essentials, and started making pendants. I’m very much in the figuring out the medium stage, trying a new technique or two whenever I sit down to make more pendants, or trying to refine what I have already tried.

Most of the pieces I have made so far are pendants, with sigils in them. I am using waterslide decal paper to put the sigils in the pendants, so I can work small with very complex sigils, and also because my tremors are being terrible and I genuinely cannot draw that small right now.

All but four of the items I have made have featured sigils. Three pendants are in a group photo in the gallery above. The other oddball was my first attempt at a bookmark, which I cured too quickly so it ended up bowed. It had other pour issues as well, so it was a resin fail, but I learned a lot from the attempt.

I am planning to make a lot more sigil pendants and tokens, for easy, portable magic. I also have plans for making a wind chime, bookmarks, incense holders, and other small or thin things that can be made with UV resin. My current setup does not allow for safely using epoxy resin, or for leaving molds to cure for hours or days, so I will not be making anything which requires that.

I also have the materials to play with faux cloisonné and faux stained glass, but I want to develop more familiarity with the medium before attempting one of those projects. As for the pendants and tokens, posts to this blog will likely show batches of whatever I’ve made recently.

“Life is Hard” Embroidery Wall-Hanger

This will be my first, ever, wall-hanger embroidery. Every other piece I have made has been on a clothing or utility item. It was directly inspired by this meme:

I have all my materials gathered, and the pattern is now drawn onto my linen blend fabric, and I am ready to begin embroidering. I set the main items (dragonfly, raven, skull, and pomegranate) and the calligraphy, and then I will be free-handing in a wreath of flowers, vines, bones, mushrooms, and maybe the occasional tiny bug.

Nice things about embroidery are that it requires very little setup and cleanup after each session, I can do it while sitting in my recliner, and it is generally a much smaller demand on my spoons, so I expect to work on it more consistently than the resin pieces. If things work out, hopefully I’ll manage to make some videos of it, too.

Additional Thoughts

Regardless of what is going on in the world, or my current inability to write coherently about the political climate or activism, I firmly believe that intersectional inclusion is critical to a brighter future, and I am not going to relinquish any aspect of my self.

Remember, if you are not a cis-het, white, male, able-bodied, bigoted, Christian man, who falls well within narrow definitions of “manliness”, you are a target. Complying won’t help you if they succeed, so why give them the satisfaction of complying, especially in advance?

Also, embrace your true self even when it feels like the whole world doesn’t want you to. You are worth it. You deserve it. It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give to yourself.