David Nutty: Art, Craft, and Adventures

Mushroom Print Post – Spore Drop

David Nutty — Mon, 21 Oct 2019 20:19:15 +0000

Now wait a good 24 hours and voila! It’s good if you cover your mushrooms with a box or a bowl or something similar while you’re waiting for your spores to drop or you’ll probably end up with a blurry print just from random drafts of air. The spores themselves, are actually located on the underside of the mushroom cap, in the gills, teeth or pores of the mushroom. One mushroom cap can produce hundreds of thousands of spores so you can see where any kind of air/wind shift pattern will send a good chunk of spores astray.

After you do the reveal and are very happy with what you see, again, because of all the spores, make sure to spray a fixative over this delicate creation so random spores are just not flying off the print when you don’t want them to.

Mushroom Print Pre – Spore Drop

David Nutty — Mon, 21 Oct 2019 08:12:23 +0000

Here’s a bit of a before and after for you. Right after you get back from picking your fresh mushrooms, just carefully cut the stem off as close to the cap as possible without shaking any of the spores in the cap loose. Then arrange them on your paper that you want to make your print on. It actually can be as easy as that.

Quail Eggs

David Nutty — Mon, 21 Oct 2019 08:05:39 +0000

Pysanky on little tiny quail eggs. Break out the micro goggles. They almost look like those chocolate foil wrapped eggs you see around Easter. Please do not eat these expecting a chocolate surprise. However, these might be good for that latest craze, Tiny Living in Tiny Houses?

Mushroom Fairy Ring

David Nutty — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 20:01:11 +0000

Doesn’t this just remind you of a mushroom fairy ring that I was able to somehow magically pick all the mushrooms from and then rearrange them in time for them to drop all their lovely spores for me? Well that’s kind of the way it happened. Imagination is a good thing. These prints always do have a magical quality about them and are just evocative of winter to me.

The Big Kahuna

David Nutty — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 18:48:02 +0000

Man, look at those guys behind The Big Kahuna, waiting their turn while he gets a color makeover. They’re so freaked out, they’ve gone totally white. That one guy, maybe could use some braces.

Pumpkin Fest – Getting Ready

David Nutty — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 18:38:27 +0000

Von Helgor and Vampire Pumpkin have now gone local with their “war paint” in anticipation of the upcoming Pumpkin Fest, being held in Franklin, North Carolina NOT to be confused with Franklin, Tennessee’s Fest, thank you very much. Anyway, it is the boys’ time of year….pumpkins. Although, I guess no one has really told them about the pumpkin rolling contest. We’ll just keep that between us right now. I suppose at this point, mentioning the pumpkin pie eating contest would just be in extremely poor taste. Taste, get it. OK, not funny.

Facial Surgery

David Nutty — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 12:10:43 +0000

Scary! Don’t look. Yes, it’s been a rough year and the guys do get a bit rambunctious. Don’t look now, but somebody is in the middle of the pumpkin version of a bit of a nip and tuck. Trust me. It’ll take years off your standard jack-o-lantern look. No scarring. Unless you want that???

Pumpkin 🎃 Papier-mâché Hatchery

David Nutty — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 11:57:51 +0000

Shhhhhh, be bwery quiet. Papier-mâché pumpkins being born here. These are their initial layers shaped over big balloons and beach balls.

Glass Brains

David Nutty — Fri, 06 Sep 2019 20:49:24 +0000

It’s Halloween People. Get gross. Get disgusting. This is not cutey pie time. We have a lot more holidays coming up for that. Think of it. A nice goopy bowl of mucous, slime with glass brains floating around. Trick or treat that!

They’re also a good example of what you can come up with with the right mold. They’re out there! This was also a successful implementation of the freeze and fuse technique. I only had to use the one mold.

Spore Print Orchid

David Nutty — Fri, 06 Sep 2019 20:38:14 +0000

Isn’t this beautiful? I’m still not sure how I got so lucky. This spore print was developed from an oyster mushroom that I actually grew at home! Yes, you too can grow your own mushrooms. Once it got big enough I carefully detached it from its growing medium and cut near the top of the cap without touching the gills of the cap and accidentally releasing any spores. This was an oyster mushroom so I kind of had an idea that black would be a good contrast and placed the cap on a dark paper background, under cover (to prevent any stray drafts of air from disturbing my print) overnight to release its beautiful spores.

In the morning, happy days. Mushrooms. Who knew? There is beauty in everything if you look deep enough.