Sunday, October 24, 2010

Creepy Crawlies

Graham Bartram produced these nicely done bottled specimens and sent over some helpful tips:

"I've made my first couple of bottled specimens and attached a couple of photos to so you can take a look. I hope you like them.

What a learning experience that was. In hindsight I can see a couple of things I could have done better and I made a couple of observations to remember for the future. Things to improve include buying a better pen in order to give me a nicer cursive script, I was amazed at how many of my pens are not truly water proof too. :/
Observation wise I noticed that the longer I left the latex, the smoother the worm. If it's still quite tacky I found I got holes that resulted in a more degraded tissue effect, that's useful of course, sometimes a degraded tissue effect looks better. I also found that chalk dust and colored chalk dust gave a different effect. Not so dirty but more dusty if you see what I mean. The colored dust gives a more chemical environment look.

I had to use a walnut ink pad for the label as I couldn't get the crystals but I have them on order and they will be in this week. I look forward to that.

Wax microwaved well too I found , no need for a double boiler but the pyrex jug I used does get a bit hot and it needs stirring every 30 seconds or so."


If you're interested in making your own you'll find some helpful information here and here. My thanks to Mr. Bartram for sharing his work.



3 comments:

  1. Tastes and opinions differ freely, to be sure, but I myself would prefer the label to be at least minimally legible beneath whatever crud's accumulated, and despite the abrasion. Some of the peripheral headings might wear away ("-ISK--ON-C UNI-ER--T-") without qualms, but midlabel text like "-nknown parasit-c worms" ought to remain pretty clear, especially if suggesting this was removed from a human host (ewwwwww). Why pass up the opportunity to gross out the viewer even further with text?

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  2. ooh - great icky fun. thanks for sharing

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  3. Thanks for the comments. Raven, I see your point and I will keep it in mind for the future. I have some other ickiness in the making but I'm having problems finding good jars. Damn recycling in this town is insane. I used to find jars in thrift shops all the time and now they all end up in bottle banks. Looks like I'll by buying some new ones instead.

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