Updates, Quotes, and Creative Pursuits

Fast Updates:

Wishing you all a safe and happy May!

We met some awesome creative folks and had a blast at the event we participated in during the month of April! We are really looking forward to our upcoming conventions.

Added Event: Makers Market-Noon Whistle Brewery

In this fantastic and inviting collection, the...... review gif

Also:

readersfavorite.com will have three of my available books listed as prizes in the monthly book giveaway. If you are interested in winning some amazing books by great authors you can check out the monthly giveaway here: book giveaway /Rise or here for The Warning Signs: giveaway/the-warning-signs and here: book-giveaway/combo.

Upcoming Event Reminders:

2024

We plan to participate at the Makers Market in Naperville, IL on May 5th! This Mother’s Day Market will take place at Noon Whistle Brewing.

Concealed Realms is scheduled to be at the Oz-Stravaganza! This event takes place May 31st – June 2nd in Chittenango, NY.

Concealed Realms plans to participate in the Kokomo Quad Con taking place July 20st and 21st. This event will take place at the Markland Mall, Kokomo IN. (Unconfirmed)

We are scheduled to participate at the DarkHistory & Horror Convention. The con this year will be August 31^st -September 1^st, at the Orpheum theater in Champaign, IL.

Concealed Realms plans to participate at the inaugural horror fiesta in Peoria IL on September 14th. This event is set to take place at the exposition gardens opera house

.We are scheduled to participate in the Lafayette Comic Con, Mighty Con on October 26th. This event takes place at the Tippecanoe County Fairgrounds, located in Lafayette, IN

Screenwriting Quotes:

“Confusion is the first step toward clarity”
-Syd Field, Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting Paperback

“There is no point in having sharp images when you’ve fuzzy ideas.”

– Jean-Luc Godard

“Ensure that your script is watertight. If it’s not on the page,

it will never magically appear on the screen.”

– Richard E. Grant

“The script is what you’ve dreamed up–this is what it should be.

The film is what you end up with.” – George Lucas

“Everything starts with writing.” – Mel Brooks

“To make a great film you need three things –

the script, the script and the script.”

– Alfred Hitchcock

“What has always been at the heart of film making was the value of a script.

It was really the writer who could make or break a film.”

– Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

“To write is to rewrite.”
-Kenya Barris

“Every scene has to be good. You work and work and work.

You torture yourself rewriting the script.”

– Nora Ephron

“Keep taking chances, take big risks, put your love into it. It does pay off.”
-Jordan Peele

Definition of : Pursuit

Dictionary.com

Noun

1. “an effort to secure or attain; quest”

2. “any occupation, pastime, or the like, in which a person is engaged regularly or customarily”

– www.dictionary.com

Merriam Webster.com

Noun

“an activity that one engages in as a vocation, profession, or avocation.”

– merriamwebster.com

Creative Pursuits

Did you know that something as simple as taking an alternate route to the store can jolt our brains into a new pattern of thinking? It is why I often share the various creative pursuits which I have undertaken in these articles. Writing about my new experiences in this medium is another way in which I can stimulate my creativity by allowing me to relive the experiences from altering perspectives. If you want to grow your creative intuition, it is important to give your brain a workout. Creativity is like a muscle that should be stretched and challenged in the same way you would go to the gym to develop strength in your core.

Lately, I have been participating in some screenwriting workshops and classes. Although the experience differs greatly from writing a novel or short story, it is only one way I have been working my artistic and creative muscles.

You can often find inspiration in the most ordinary places and just like taking an alternate route to the store, changing artistic mediums can be just as beneficial as taking classes. As such, I thought I would try a new artistically challenging project that went beyond the written words and as luck would have it, while working on reviving my backyard I stumbled onto a product called glow powder. This product seemed versatile and simple to work with so I thought it would be fun to do some experiments. In this post, I will share some artistic variations I tried with glow powder.

Glow Powder

Simply put, photoluminescent glow powders are non-toxic pigment particles that can be charged by almost any visible or ultraviolet light. The pigments then release energy in the form of visible light. My first idea for this powder was to create glowing stones for my garden bed by adding it to cement mix, but after some extended research I found that although this could work, overall you would have to use a lot of powder to achieve the desired results. After shifting my plans, I chose to try mixing the glow powder with paint and also mixing it with different resins in several simple experiments.

I chose to obtain both blue and green glow powder for my tests because after reading many reviews it seemed these were the colors that shown best. To keep it simple, I used a ratio of one teaspoon of glow powder to one ounce of liquid in each experiment.

Painting with Glow powder

I first attempted to paint stones with a mixture of glow powder and standard clear acrylic paint. I found that although time consuming, using a paint brush for application was the best option. After two layers of paint, I then finished the stones with a clear coat sealer. The stones were not as bright as I had hoped, but they do have an eerie glow.

Next I attempted to add the glow powder directly to the sealant. I used this mixture to paint the tops of two cement mushrooms made last August while working on a different creativity post. This seemed to have a brighter effect then the aforementioned method. You can see them glowing slightly, even before the lights were shut off.

Glow Powder mixed with Resin

For the first experiments with resin, I used my resin printer. I made a dragon as a test print. The glow barely showed on the dragon. I added a small amount of mica pigment and attempted to make some dice. The glow powder shone more clearly with the dice, but although the printer is constantly in motion, I found that the powder would settle at the bottom of the resin vat causing the prints to only glow in certain places.

I decided to try regular two step epoxy resin instead. After mixing the resin and adding in the glow powder, I poured it into several silicone molds. Once the resin solidified the reaction was much more significant than with the previous experiments, in my opinion.

I liked the results of this last experiment and decided to make a limited amount of glowing charms for upcoming events. For these I left some of the resin clear, but added mica powder to a few as well.

Final thoughts

I had a lot of fun experimenting with glow powder in different ways. Finding new ways to express your creativity disrupts patterns and often helps stimulate your artistic muscles. This in turn can inspire even more creativity.

I want to thank you for your continued support. I hope that you enjoyed this brief post! Lets look to the future with hope, excited about the chance for a fresh start and the endless possibilities to come. Stay safe and keep being awesome.