A small list of random ass sites I’ve found useful when writing:
Fragrantica: perfume enthusiast site that has a long list of scents. v helpful when you’re writing your guilty pleasure abo fics
Just One Cookbook: recipe site that centers on Japanese cuisine. Lots of different recipes to browse, plenty of inspiration so you’re not just “ramen and sushi”
McCormick Science Institute: yes this is a real thing. the site shows off research on spices and gives the history on them. be historically accurate or just indulge in mindless fascination. boost your restaurant au with it
Cocktail Flow: a site with a variety of cocktails that’s pretty easy to navigate and offers photos of the drinks. You can sort by themes, strengths, type and base. My only real annoyance with this site is that the drinks are sometimes sorted into ~masculine~ and ~feminine~ but ehhhh. It’s great otherwise.
Tie-A-Tie: a site centered around ties, obviously. I stumbled upon it while researching tie fabrics but there’s a lot more to look at. It offers insight into dress code for events, tells you how to tie your ties, and has a section on the often forgotten about tie accessories
Even more:
Types of High Heels: A page describing twenty five different types of high heels. It gives a description and pictures. Shake it up from just “stilettos and kitten heels”
Random Job Generator: Exactly as it says. The site offer more generators like characters, plots, or town names.
When I was in highschool, my culinary teacher gave me the greatest gift of all- the actual recipe from red lobster, he worked there for a little bit. I haven’t made a batch in forever but I’m excited.
The cheese bread biscuits from red lobster?!? Teach us dear anon submitter!!!
mix bisquick mix, cheese and milk until a soft dough forms. don’t over stir, it mixes pretty quick
grease a pan or put parchment paper down
Put dough balls about 2 inches apart, and put in oven. MAKE SURE the oven is completely pre heated, if you put it in before hand the biscuits will come out nasty.
Bake 8-10 minutes.
Melt the butter in the microwave completely. Add parsley, seasonings and stir.
Once biscuits are done, should be brown on the bottom, pull them out and let them sit for a moment before covering or dipping them in the butter. Dipping upside down means more coverage.
NOW, here is the recipe I actually use:
This recipe makes 10-12 biscuits.
3 cups all purpose Flour 1 tablespoon baking powder 1 tablespoon sugar 1 teaspoon salt ¾ teaspoon cream of tartar ¾ cup butter or ½ cup butter ¼ shortening 1 and ¼ cup milk
Preheat oven to 450. Combine flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, and cream of tartar. Using a blender/pastry blender, cut the butter into the mixture until it looks crumbly. make a well/hole in the middle of the mixture and pour ALL the milk in at once.
Now, you’ll want to add the cheese, which for this recipe you’ll want to use ¾ to 1 cup sharp cheddar.
Use a fork to stir/fold the mixture just until the mixture is all moist. Do not over mix.
Use a spoon or scoop, and scoop 12 onto a parchment paper or a greased pan surface. You’ll want to put them 1 ½ – 2 inches apart.
Bake for 10-14 minutes, until the bottoms are brown.
½ cup butter or margarine, melted ½ teaspoon garlic powder ½ teaspoon parsley 1/3 teaspoon old bay seasoning OR onion powder
Melt the butter, mix and either dip the biscuits in or cover them with a brush/spoon. If there is any left over it goes super good on french bread too.
Let’s say you wanted to glue fabric to wood, but what do you use? What about glass to paper? This to That lets you choose two things you want to glue and lists what types of glue is best. (Because people have a need to glue things to other things!)
This is an incredibly awesome site. Go check it out!
Whhhhaaaaaattt!???
EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT THIS
This is one of the first websites I was told about in props. It also has information about the toxicity, adhere time, price, and other stuff about the glues.
COULD YOU IMAGINE THE COSPLAY SHIT ONE COULD DO WITH THIS????
Hey guys, just wanted to butt in here.
This is exactly the same stuff as Instamorph. And guess what? Instamorph is actually cheaper. A 400g (gram) bag of Plastimake is $30 (Can you say ouch?) Where as a 12 ounce jar of Instamorph is only $17. Why is this important? 12 ounces = roughly 340 grams. That’s almost that same amount, but wayyyy cheaper. Not only that, but it seems Plastimake is currently out of stock? Further, Instamorph also has colour packets for $12, and Plastimake’s are $15.
I’m not saying Plastimake is bad, i’m just saying if you aren’t exactly rich, it’s good to have a cheaper alternative that’s just as good.
There’s your daily dose of marketing info for the day, happy crafting! 😀
I wanted to add that not only can you use this stuff straight up (and there are quite a few companies out there making it now at different price points), you can ALSO use it to make homemade Worbla, which is way cheaper than the stuff you can buy online for armor and other crafting (all you really need is some flour, the moldable pellets, and heat to make it)
The program is called Sculptris and is a free off-shoot program from Zbrush, that program that you keep hearing about but either takes selling your kidneys or piracy to actually use.
If you download it and sculpt out a facial model, you can have references for your own work for all of time. No more endlessly searching Google for reference materials or twisting/rotating/flipping a drawing to see if there are flaws. And you can easily edit it to create more facial types. This way, you can make character references for any and every face and facial angle that you can think of.
The program offers mirroring right from the start, so your faces will be perfectly symmetrical. You can turn off the symmetry for things like scars or otherwise.
It takes a little time. For instance, I downloaded the program on Christmas and, in my spare time, this took a few days of getting familiar with the program (first day) and then sculpting for a few minutes each day, mostly due to my perfectionist nature. And this one isn’t even done. I still have to mold the mouth, ears, and other smaller aspects before I consider it done. However, I was so giddy over the possibilities that I wanted to share this with my fellow artists.
From now on, I have reference for a face in my own style and will be able to create things so much easier in the future.
I hope that this helps you guys and that you have fun with it.
I absolutely recommend Sculptris!
UH
GUYS????
This really useful oh my goodness. It takes a little figuring out, but once you get the hang of it it’s actually pretty easy. Just watch a couple youtube videos. Seeing how other people do it helps you to make sense of it.
OH BOY LOOK AT THIS HANDSOME SILLY do you know how hard his stupid face is to figure out at different angles? DO YOU??? Now I have a 3D ref!!! AAAHH!! so excite much 3d wow very angles wow
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: sculptris is an amazing 3D modeling tool for how small it is and is a great place to start whether you just want drawing references for your characters or you actually want to get into 3D modeling.
these fuckers have about 27 inches of stretch in the cuffs and will fit damn near any leg, in a billion colours, including stripes and rainbows. need em longer? got you covered. the entire ‘extraordinary’ series is hella comfy, shipping’s always free and lightening fast, annnd their selection is huge.
if you have an ipod or iphone or ipad or whatever then Please download the app “Make a Pose”
it gives you a lil figure like this
and you can make them do whatever you want!! Like
Took me about 1.4 minutes to make this sad little guy it’s Really easy to get the hang of
they Happy
you can change the camera angle so easy too so you can get perspective + foreshortening reference
THIS IS ALL FREE TOO but if you pay $2 you unlock the ability to have two figures onscreen at the same time so you can make COUPLE POSES
AND YOU CAN CHANGE THE LIGHTING,
you can also make rooms and place some objects or characters like so:
YOU WANT A CHARACTER W/ A BIGGER CHEST? HERE THEY ARE
YOU WANT A FRICKIN HORSE?
NEIGH NEIGH MOTHER FUCKER
ANYWAY YOU CAN PAY ABSOLUTELY $0 TO GET THE APP WITH THE ABILITY TO POSE ONE FIGURE AT A TIME AND IF YOU PAY $2 YOU GET TO PUT UP TO 6 CHARACTERS ON THE SCREEN AT ONCE AND YOU ALSO GET A GOTDAMN HORSE. again it is called “Make a Pose” and it’s for iphone or ipod touch or ipad and i cannot recommend it enough
My boss just complimented me on how well I manage to keep structure with naming files and putting things in folders
Little does he know it’s a skill I acquired in order to avoid this Artist Problem™
uh, sure? I’m not sure what you had in mind but here’s how I keep my art folders at least. I made a chart, yay.
not pictured; “junk” and “wip” folders. also back when I did more trad art, I had folders for traditional/digital/mixed too.
also while I’m on the subject of art and files and such; I can’t stress enough how important it is to keep backups of your files!!! on a hard-drive or online or whatever, either way it will save your ass at some point in your life
Also, if you suck at giving things titles (like me) you can name them by date instead. It keeps it really organized.
Me 