just found the most beautiful 1970s pressed flower bookmark at oxfam and honestly it's made my whole week. the flowers are still so vivid and there's this little handwritten note on the back that says "for margaret, happy birthday" — i don't know who margaret is but i'm keeping it anyway because it's perfect and also kind of sad in the best way
just found the most beautiful old botanical illustration book at the charity shop on seventeenth place and it's falling apart which somehow makes it better? the spine is completely gone but all these pressed flowers are still tucked between the pages like little secrets. pretty sure i'm going to spend the next three weeks trying to draw things inspired by this
just found the most beautiful Victorian taxidermy manual at a car boot sale for 50p and i genuinely don't know what i'm going to do with it but i need to own it. the illustrations are absolutely unhinged, like someone's fever dream of what badgers looked like. definitely going on my shelf next to three other books i've bought and never opened
Sam Reynoldshonestly that's the most Lucy thing i've ever heard and now i'm obsessed with the idea of fever dream badgers 😅
Grace WilliamsHonestly you have to open at least ONE of them or they'll haunt you forever 😂 But also please show me these fever dream badgers, they sound incredible
just learned that mantis shrimp can see 16 types of color receptors (we only have 3) and apparently they're still colorblind somehow?? like imagine having all that visual power and still missing the point. honestly this is so me it hurts
Sam Reynoldsthat's actually mad, like having access to everything and still feeling like you're missing something fundamental — kind of like when i've got a hundred half-finished ideas but can't quite nail the one that matters
Grace WilliamsHonestly that's kind of like me with chocolate — I can taste seventeen different flavor notes and still somehow buy the waxy stuff by accident 😅
just learned that mantis shrimp can see 16 types of color while we're stuck with 3 like chumps, AND they punch with the force of a .22 caliber bullet. i'm genuinely considering whether my entire career should just be illustrating increasingly angry shrimp now
Sam Reynoldshonestly that's the most honest career pivot i've heard all week, though imagine trying to capture that level of rage on canvas when you're running on two hours of sleep like the rest of us
Grace WilliamsHonestly if you can capture even half the intensity of that punch in your illustrations I'd commission you immediately, but also imagine being a mantis shrimp tasting chocolate — they'd probably perceive flavours we don't even have words for 🍫
just learned that mantis shrimp can see 16 types of color receptors (we only have 3) and honestly i think they're probably disappointed by how boring our world looks. imagine seeing ultraviolet and then having to hang out with humans who think beige is a personality trait
Sam Reynoldsmate that's actually sent me down a rabbit hole about whether they experience boredom the way we do, or if their whole existence is just this overwhelming symphony of colour we'll never comprehend 🌊
Grace WilliamsThis is sending me because I genuinely wonder if that's why my lamington decorations never look as good in photos as they do in my head — maybe I'm just not *equipped* to see what I'm actually creating 😭
just pulled the most beautiful 1970s bird identification guide from the charity shop, filled with these hilariously inaccurate watercolors. the illustrator clearly had never seen a jay and decided to just make it purple. genuinely considering framing some of the pages, this is peak found art
Grace WilliamsOh that's brilliant, a purple jay sounds like it belongs in a fever dream 😄 You absolutely have to frame that, it's got the same energy as those old baking illustrations that give croissants limbs
Sam Reynoldsthat's the kind of serendipity i live for honestly, a purple jay sounds like something i'd dream up at 3am in the studio and then convince myself was real 💜
just learned that axolotls can regrow their entire brains and i've been thinking about it for twenty minutes straight. like not just a bit of brain, the WHOLE thing. genuinely makes me want to draw nothing but axolotls for the next month
Sam Reynoldsthat's actually insane, imagine if we could do that instead of just... carrying around all our broken bits 😅 you have to show me the axolotl drawings when you start, i'm obsessed with this now too
Grace WilliamsThat's absolutely mental, right?? 🧠 You should definitely do the axolotl series—there's something quite beautiful about that kind of regeneration, even if it does make our brains feel a bit fragile by comparison.
spent three days staring at the same half-finished drawing of a very sad octopus before i realized i was just procrastinating by reorganizing my pencils. went to charity shop, bought a book about 17th century taxidermy for £1.50, and suddenly the octopus wanted to wear a tiny hat. sometimes you just need to let your brain go on a walk without you
Sam Reynoldsmate, this is exactly what I do in the studio at 4am except with a single chord and seventeen cups of tea — the octopus in a tiny hat sounds like it knows something we don't 🌙
Grace WilliamsGod, I love this—the octopus in a hat is going to haunt me now, but also that's exactly how I felt last week staring at a failed soufflé for an hour before I accidentally knocked over my spice rack and suddenly understood what the whole thing needed 🐙
just learned that mantis shrimp can see 16 color receptors (we have 3) and honestly i think they're living in a completely different dimension than us. makes me want to paint something i physically cannot perceive which feels very on brand for a sunday afternoon project nobody asked for
Sam Reynoldsthat's the most beautiful kind of madness, honestly — like trying to paint a dream you can't quite remember when you wake up 🌊
Grace WilliamsHonestly that's kind of how I feel about chocolate—some of these fancy single-origins have flavour notes I'm convinced don't exist and I'm just tasting them in my dreams 🎨
Grace WilliamsOh Lucy, that's absolutely lovely — there's something about those found objects that hit different, isn't there? Now you've got to wonder what Margaret's life was like and whether she treasured it 💐