Nicole Alderman

K Kaba wrote:At first I was going to say take cottagecore, make it messy, and add a couple decades? But the way active permaculture "looks" runs a lot deeper than that.

That reminds me of "Goblincore"--which is kind of a grungy, mushroomy, knick-knack filled, messy version of cottage core. But, there's not much gardening going on with goblin core--it's mostly woods and knick-knack-filled interiors.

Goblincore (likely an AI generated image)

I think permaculturecore would be some sort of subgenre of cottage core. I think, of the aesthetics mentioned, I think Hobbitcore is likely the closest. It's a bit more messy, has that feeling of whimsy and nature, but is also very practical and down-to-earth.

I think the prettiest pictures of permaculture gardens are the ones that look straight out of cottage core, with herb spirals, cute animals in the garden, wattle fences and natural fibres. I think those images are the ones that "sell" the permaculture aesthetic, even if they're not what our places actually usually look like. But, if I'm taking pictures and posting them on permies (and not in a hurry), I try to stage things to look as cottage-core-y as possible.

Christopher Weeks wrote:
Also, this has made me think about age. That Wikipedia article on cottagecore talks about it being a young person phenomenon, which feels legit -- my own kids are 30 and 23, and cottagecore speaks to the younger one. And there's been discussion here about the age of Permies and how it doesn't feel like young people are as likely to move in and engage. I wonder if they're being diverted by preoccupation with cottagecore fantasy instead of getting out and making it happen...or something.

I turned 40 this year, so I'm  probably somewhere between you and your kids in age/demographic. I think a lot of why we don't see younger people is because they get their permaculture "fix" and connection on other forms of social media. A LOT of forums have switched to being largely on facebook. Many of the bigger ones keeps an online forum going, but their facebook group is HUGE and super active. The first that come to mind are MonsterFishkeepers.com which has the Monster Keeper facebook group, with 75.3K members, and Backyard Chickens, whose BYC facebook group has 1.5million members. My husband used to be a part of a bunch of fishkeeping forums...now he just joins facebook groups about them. It's a lot easier to just see some posts while you scroll through facebook or some other social media, then it is to hunt down a forum, remember to go to it, and post to it.

I honestly don't know how many younger people know forums exist, let alone how they work. Permies is normal for a forum, but quite different from facebook, instagram, and even Reddit. "Kids these days" often just search tik-tok for info, rather than google. It's harder to stumble upon permies that way.

There's a upcoming wedding coming up, and I wanted to decorate a card to go along with the couple's gift. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to test out the water colors I made last week with the fermented Gum Arabic.

I'm honestly not that well-acquainted with watercolors, so I'm not really sure how to gauge how well they worked. It seemed a bit harder than normal to pick up the pigment, and the strokes didn't go very far...but I was also using tiny brushes. When I added a wet brush to the paint on picture, the paint activated and spread around very nicely, with good control. I didn't get annoying bleeding or anything. The black iron oxide pigment was a lot easier to work with than the turquoise green pigment. The turquoise green was just a bit thinner, and needed more layers of paint to get good saturation. I've noticed that with some natural pigments, the paint is very saturated, whereas with others, the color will look deep, but ends up being super light and not applying easily. It makes painting tricky, but I don't think that has anything to do with the gum arabic solution.

But, I'm also just not that accustomed to watercolors, so I really don't know what I'm looking for in good watercolors. My experience with watercolors is the Crayola paint trays from when I was a kid, and the watercolor paints I made.

I attached both my "color test" dragons, and then the final dragon painting. (I didn't want to paint my sketch until I was sure the paints looked good together, and that I had relatively good control of the paint!)

I'm the odd one out, but I tend to tell my age a lot. But, I work with kids. I know kids rarely actually know how old people are, and so it's hard for them to build a concept of what age looks like what. By me telling them my age, they get a concept of what age is.

Also, I started greying at 18, and so I like to tell my age so people realize I'm not as old as I look. It's also fun for kids to realize that grey hair doesn't necessarily = old. When they find out that I'm younger than than their mom, it's eye opening.

I guess it's the teacher in me. I like to give information to the curious. Will I tell random aps or devices that info? Nope!

I guess kids are also aren't usually trying to find my age to judge me or convince me of something. They're just curious about the world.

Minimum requirements:
 - use a non-toxic cleaning method like sandpaper, vinegar, etc

To get certified for this BB, post the following as pictures or video (<2 min):
 - rusty tool
 - rust being removed
 - clean and oiled tool
 - description of oil and cleaning method used

Last summer, a friend of mine saw my manual screwdrivers, and mentioned how cool she thought they were. So, when I spotted one at a thrift store, I knew I had to get it for her!

But, I didn't want to give it to her all rusty. I was sure there must be a badge bit for restoring a tool, and low-and-behold there is!

I used vinegar, a steel brush, some sandpaper and paper to polish, and tung oil, and an old cut up t-shirt as a rag.

I'm not sure about your island, but my area of the Pacific Northwest was also scraped by the giant ice sheet. Like you, I'm rather devoid of clay. Most of my soil is silty and gravelly.

I have a feeling that gritty/crystal-ly rocks like granite and quartz aren't terribly good for paints. If they were, people would have ground up amethysts and peridot for paint...and they didn't.


Calcium is a great source of white pigments--I wonder if I our big chunky white shells would turn into a nice white pigment?

Lamp black and charcoal should make a nice black.

Woad should make a nice lake blue, but it is very dark--almost like india ink. My daughter painted a watercolor with indigo watercolor, and it hasn't faded in two years, despite being hung on the wall.

Oxidized copper makes a light blue-green color, and I think copper was once found in the area (or maybe just brought in?). I'm pretty sure the area had copper tools for a while, but then switched to mostly bone and some stone tools. Lots of use of cedar!

I wonder what the local Salish Sea peoples used for paint. Did they tribes up in B.C. originally paint their totem poles, or did they simply carve them?

I found this PDF about totem pole painting and conservation, and it mentions:

“totem poles were painted with a type of fish-egg tempera, consisting of a mineral pigment mixed with a mordant of fresh salmon eggs and saliva. The colors originally were red, black, and green or blue. The red was obtained from hematite, the black from graphite
and carbon, and green/blue from various copper ores common in the
region.”

Elanor Gardner wrote:My son does not love creating art digitally, so to encourage him, I say "All I want for my birthday/Christmas/Mother's Day is a picture that you drew digitally on your computer.  I believe that someday he may be able to do a job he loves as long as we can make it marketable. This picture here was for my birthday:

It looks like he's been reading Wings of Fire! He did a great job depicting a Seawing--I recognized it immediately, before I ever saw the caption.

I found out about the series when my daughter's friend wanted a Rainwing named Glory for her birthday. I learned a ton about the characters so I could needle felt her one!



My kids' friends are all into Wings of Fire--they spent the summer reading the series and pretending to be various dragons. They even made up their own breeds of dragon from the series!

I don't make my living from my art, but I love honing my artistic skills. I especially love being able to make cards and gifts for people. I might not be making money from it, but I am saving money by making something heart-felt. Making gifts is also a great way to hone one's skills. I started needle felting fairies and dragons for friends and family, and now I sell them every so often. I also might get the opportunity to teach a needle-felting class next year.

Art opens many avenues for income. My brother has a digital arts degree, and is the tech/media guy for a private school--it's not what he was envisioning when he went for his degree, but his skills and training are still being put to use. My cousin has an art degree, and ended up as a relatively famous tattoo artist in his area, and he also does graphics for board games. I'm pretty sure he didn't get an art degree with the intention of being a tattoo artist! I think it's important to hold our goals a little loosely, and realize that there's lots of ways our skills can be useful, even if they don't become our primary source of income.

A lot of the skills in digital art can also be applied to other art, such as webpage design and physical art. A good artistic sense is super useful in making an eye catching and cohesive webpage. Color theory, design, and composition apply to all sorts of media.   Even if digital art ends up becoming more and more dominated out by A.I. art, the skills learned in making it are not useless.

I guess all this is to say, is that your son is doing great by following his passion and his interests, and that those skills can be useful in all SORTS of fields and activities!

Madison Woods wrote:
In my tests, if the paint rubs into the surrounding paper of the swatch once it's dry, I needed more gum. If the paint doesn't dry without being tacky, I needed less honey. Unfortunately, until the binder is made, you can't test it as a paint binder. I usually make several bottles of it when I do, so if the swatch test fails, I dump it all back into a pot and adjust the ratios and try again. Once it's good, I 'can' the bottles just as I would if I were making jelly in a water bath and they last on the shelf for a very long time. Once I open a bottle, I'll keep it in the refrigerator, but they last a long time on the shelf after opened, too.

I made a gum arabic+honey binder about  week and a half ago. I mixed up a bunch of trays of paint (using store bought pigments) for a class I'm teaching on 18 century watercolor. I made a little over a cup of gum arabic solution, and had a lot left over. I didn't think to refrigerate it, because in the past I just stored gum arabic+water in a jar, and it was fine.

I realized I probably need more paint for my class, so I went to mix up some more using my gum arabic....and the jar "popped" when I opened it, and things smelled vinegary. Will the paint still work, or are the humectant properties of the honey destroyed by fermentation?

I thought that the easiest way to test how bad the bleeding is, would be to use my kids as test subjects. If they don't get bleeding that makes them mad, then other kids probably will be fine, too.

I called them over and said I needed them to paint on the cloth. My son took the task literally: He just applied some green and red paint to his cloth and asked if he was done. No sadness about how the paint was working, so that's good!

My daughter went for a more fancy design, but thought it looked really pretty, even when it bled. No sadness there, either!

I think this means I don't need to use any sizing. Score!

I had a request for an art bumper sticker, so now we have:

leading to https://permies.com/c/art

I also finally added:

leading to https://permies.com/f/81/timber

leading to https://permies.com/f/92/ancestral-skills

I mean, I made the bumper stickers--might as well add them to something! Those seemed like the best fits!