Latest Haul: My New Hobby, Woodworking (Product Review

 So, the last haul that I brought in stirred up some trouble, in the form of a reddening skin condition on my leg. That blog article ended up dovetailing in to the context of this latest haul of mine, the woodworking tools and gear haul for the LED Backlit Sparrow Spiritual Mini Meditation Woodcut Panel project, essentially a reimagined take on a throwback decorative piece that I had in my old apartment and loft.

The original backlit spiritual woodcut panel art piece, which I custom outfitted with a base, glass panel backing, with LED strip lights inside, with stuff from IKEA. The woodcut panel came from Marco Polo Imports, in Santa Monica, now closed. (2011)

My 2026 contextually upcycled new take on a spiritual-themed and decorative meditation backlit wall panel, this time, in miniature form, so that I could accommodate doing the project from within my assisted care living group home housing environment situation. 

The project represents a change of pace, from “whatever” I was doing, previously… I guess it was a bunch of other product hauls and pigeon feeding, for the most part. Anyways, I gave the sparrows a feature part in this concept, as well as the medicinal flower inclusion, symbolizing a transition in to a different hobby, and perhaps some products in development along those lines. 

So, I initially imagined the mini sparrow woodcut panel, as part of a conceptualized product marketing campaign and branding mockup of ideas and imagery, through consulting heavily with Google Gemini artificial intelligence. I floated the idea of the original woodcut panel, from its origins in Southeast Asia (Indonesia, perhaps), and I wanted the theme to be representative of my friends, the birds, along the way, with a different flower that I’d been heavily researching and studying, over the past several months, leading up to today (early April 2026), the new flower being Michelia alba, a highly fragrant subtropical tree in the Magnolia family, that was found in my mother’s first home country of Hong Kong (Great Britain, China). 

My mother and I were both in to gardening, back in my teen years, growing up, and it was my retreat in to a change of pace, and it was something to work on, in between my school studies and getting in to trouble, here and there, myself. Eventually we purchased a Michelia alba tree, after seeing them available at San Gabriel Nursery. The trees were on the higher end of the price range for trees of that size, ostensibly due to the rarity that it was, here in Southern California, and for its prized fragrant flowering blooms, which appear throughout several months out of the year, in the scarce gardening regions 10 and 11, which is basically Southern California, Florida, and perhaps a few other small, scattered locations around America. Prior to purchasing one of the trees, I would commonly visit the trees at the gardening center to smell the flowers.

Here is what Gemini and I came up with, for a reconstitution formulation (a highly valuable feature):

### 10-Gram Trial Batch (Weights)

Since you're ready to mix, here are the weights for a **10-gram sample**. This is the safest way to test the balance without wasting your precious Orris or Lilytol.

| Ingredient | Amount for 10g Batch |

|---|---|

| **Linalool** | 5.30 g |

| **Lilytol** | 0.80 g |

| **Phenylethyl Alcohol (PEA)** | 0.70 g |

| **Benzyl Alcohol** | 0.60 g |

| **Benzyl Acetate** | 0.40 g |

| **Beta-Ionone** | 0.30 g |

| **Ocimene** | 0.25 g |

| **Geranyl Acetate** | 0.20 g |

| **Ethyl 2-methylbutyrate** | 0.15 g |

| **Indole (10% in DPG)** | 0.15 g |

| **Alpha-Terpineol** | 0.15 g |

| **Jasminlactone** | 0.12 g |

| **Beta-Caryophyllene** | 0.10 g |

| **Heliotropin Replacer (10% dil.)** | 0.30 g (This is 3 parts) |

| **Orris Butter (10% dil.)** | 0.10 g (This is 1 part) |

| **Methyl Benzoate (10% dil.)** | 0.05 g |

| **DPG (to finish weight)** | 0.33 g |

| **Total** | **10.00 g** |

Perhaps this gives readers a sense of the smell of the flower. It’s described as very sweet and fruity, while having some facets of other white flowers. 

So, I set out in trying to recreate my favorite visual piece in my loft and in my apartment, in a renewed form, a miniature woodcut panel featuring sparrows and Michelia alba flowers. 

To do this, I had to investigate the tools I would use, in order to complete the job. My search happened around the time of Amazon’s Big Spring Sale, and I found some great deals on tools and parts. 

———————

Break. Taking a break. Here’s some stuff to look at, in the meantime.     

The basic rotary tool kit, with bits, burrs, and a flex shaft.

Some wood carving burr bits.

Drill milling bits.

A 60° V groove bit

A tungsten carbide flame burr bit.

Some other wood carving bits. 

One of 10 various angle V groove bits.

Colored acrylic panels, for a choice of backdrop lighting for the finished art piece.

The original work’s carbon paper, which is used to transfer the tracing of the image on to the woodcut panel, prior to cutting it. 

The carbon outlines and details of the image, on the woodcut panel, with the cut out parts blacked out. 

The original work piece template, as a printing.

A prior version of the art piece, on the board, as a silhouette of the cut out portions.

An earlier version of the carbon tracing.

An imaginative pre-visualization of what the wood panel on backlit colored acrylic could look like. 

A color corrected original image of the art piece.

A grayscale image of the work, for bit depth judgment and for tracing. 

A 3D render of the flat image, as a pre-visualization tool.

Some Dremel 106 bits, for surface detail work.

A long and narrow carbide burr, for chucking out wood more effectively.

Neodyminium magnets, for attaching the acrylic panels to the wood piece (potentially). 

A more recent, angled view of the woodcut panel, where a good portion of the outlines has been completed.

The backlight framing shadow box, with a 5 meter strip light (one white color only).

The frame box, in prototype form, with mounting hardware holding the colored acrylic panel in place, with the backlights on.

10 mil Mylar sheets, for diffusing the light, prior to it hitting the acrylic panel.

Now, about 10 days in to the project, you can get an idea as to what the end product will look like. I’ve gotten a little bit further on the woodcutting panel, and I may have made some slight errors, in cutting out some of the wood parts, such as the birds’ beaks, in one or two cases, but perhaps that will be fixable before the woodcutting is done. I put together the backlight frame, after much shopping around, and I settled on a 5 meter USB-powered white only strip light, which was very cheap, from Temu. I tried some RGB colored puck lights, but the diameter of the lights wasn’t quite sufficient to cover enough surface area, so I guess I’ll use those in some other way. 

Overall, I’m pretty satisfied, so far, with the progress of things; I spent several nights and a couple of days out, doing the woodcutting outdoors, and creating the backlit LED box portion of the project was another task entirely. It’ll take some figuring out, still, as to how the woodcut panel will stick on to the acrylic, and I imagined that it could be done using neodyminium magnets, which are very powerful, for their size, so I purchased some. The entire piece is loosely constructed, mostly because I’d like to have the option to try out different colors of the acrylic panels, since this is the only prototype version of the product that I have, so far. 

Hopefully, in the next few days, I’ll have the silhouette carved out, and we can preview what the woodcut panel will look like, when mounted on top of the light box. 

This is what the woodcut looks like after several work sessions and 11 days later.

I went out and did a work session for a couple of hours, and I’m pretty pleased with the results, so far. The mistakes I had made are reparable, and I’m almost through cutting flush lines out of the cutout sections. I think I might be able to preview the work on the backlit panel this evening, if I put in one more work session, prior to this evening. 

My first rough cut of the silhouette of the woodcut panel, on top of the backlit panel. 

So I spent a couple more hours on chucking out the cut out spots and straightening the edges up, between the form that was to stay put, versus the cut out spots. Someone had mentioned that it’s difficult to make out the subject matter, in this portrayal of the woodcut panel, so I’m thinking that it could be the color of the wood itself, or of the acrylic panel, or perhaps the piece would do better if it had spotlights or dome lights, overhead. I don’t know if I should try to define the forms of the subject matter more so, using fine drill milling, along the surface detail lines, I hadn’t planned for that. Essentially, the original woodcut panel was a more motif-based piece, based on foliage and flourish types of effects of the cut patterns, centered around a lotus flower - much simpler, and the foreground detail was still recognizable, despite that the piece was backlit. 

Next, I placed a white acrylic panel underneath the woodcut, for comparison with the original large form piece. I did some mockup dramatic color shifting, along with boosting some image component sliders here, lowering some others, there. I wanted to take a peek at what the piece would look like with some stain, along with more emphasis on the pencil lining that still exists on the wood, and here, I emphasized the contrast and black point. It gave me a sense of depth to the otherwise flat edged silhouette panel, as though the grooves had been defined by further woodwork (that still needs to be done). In any case, this visualization of the piece gives a far more relatable image, for its detail, and for its color, which would be achieved by applying some wood stain. I think that the piece will look something like this (at least, hopefully), or perhaps a bit better, for being naturally wrought, rather than digitally altered. I just wanted to get the piece to a place right around this spot, to check on the visual effect of the backlighting and to check out different colored acrylic panels, for reference. 

Here’s the panel with a spotlight, and another image with a dome light. Both add definition and detail, in otherwise natural light, and they’re both plausible display scenarios, for the end user.

Natural light and coloration, with a spotlight.

Natural light and coloration, with a dome light.

So, what remains to be done is the surface detail of the piece, making grooves and edging things off, here and there. Outside of trying some stain on the wood panel, which would come later, at the end, or close to it, some surface lighting adds a lot of definition to the existing cuts and tracing lines. 

Here’s what the kit looks like, in the dark. 

Next, I tried a turquoise panel. I’m pretty fond of this combination, in the dark of the night. The nearly black silhouette goes well against a luminous backdrop, and it reminds me of a Bash command line terminal aesthetic. 

Update: Sunday, April 26th, 2026.

I did some experimentation with completing the detail portion of the job, now that I had a decent silhouette worked out. Prior to that, though, I sanded down the corners and edges to remove the bits of wood that were sticking out. For the detail, I worked with Genmitsu v-groove bits, which are basically a set of angled bits, each a different angle, out of a set of 10. I used the sharper ones, maybe 20-30° degree angle bits, for engraving the surface layer portions, as though I were tracing over it with the rotary tool. I wasn’t sure how it would turn out, but I finished it up, earlier this evening, and I put some stain on the wood, and it looks fantastic, in my opinion! Take a look. 

The woodcut, with its first layer of stain.

Here’s the woodcut panel on top of the backlit acrylic box frame, with some spotlight effect on it (otherwise the surface detail is darkened, a lot). 

I guess that the piece could be done over again, I was still learning technique as I was doing this first piece of mine. Maybe some of the parts could be gone over one more time, since there’s some small discrepancies between this woodcut and the original image. The piece looks a lot better miniaturized, which was kind of my concept, to begin with - mini meditation woodcut panels and 3D prints. It’s not all that much poorly done, after examining it some more, I think I just missed a few things, for the most part. 

This is the current look of the piece, the morning after.

Here it is, with a yellow acrylic panel.

After letting the situation (i.e. some of the birds look cartoony, and I suppose I ran the rotary tool a bit ragged, on some of the design features. Aside from that, there’s a few spots that still need hollowing out, and I caught wind of the memory of wood putty, which could be the missing link on some of these surface scoring and engraving blunders on the leaves and birds. There is, also, trim around the edges of the entire relief, which is comprised of bas relief floral and flourish motifs. What’s left to do is figure out if I’m rescuing the piece, or ruining it, by doing more “stuff” to it. Obviously a whole new second try on the piece with a new wood panel would probably turn out better than the first, but I have to figure out if I’m going to try this one again, or if I’ll move on to a different design. 

Continuing forth in critical analysis of the work that’s been done, so far, it came up that the piece is lacking depth and layers of bas relief, which are implied in the original generated image, so I might probably try to excavate some of the surface level of some of the design, to begin with. The wood piece is pretty sturdy, so I think it could hold up well, and have some more work done on it. 

Here’s the lavender-colored acrylic panel, with a dark silhouette of the woodcut. I feel that this one is pretty compelling, it reminds me of Halloween.

Pigeons Amongst the Almond Blossoms (painted picture).

 I’d mentioned before that I had become fond of Van Gogh’s Almond Blossoms painting, which I became aware of from encountering the likeness of the image on a nightlight, which I got off of Amazon Vine. Here, at the nursing facility where I now stay, there’s an activity room, for doing crafts and for getting on the internet, or just a computer, for residents that don’t have access, otherwise. One of the managers here encouraged me to do some paintings, since they have canvasses and watercolors, here. This is my third painting that I’ve done here, and it’s the first painting that I really sort of took seriously, in doing my best to fill in all of the white of the canvas, like a standard painting would have. I think that it came out well; I’d previously done an impressionist art adaptation of Van Gogh’s Starry Starry Night in polymer clay, which I textured with a pin, to imitate the impasto technique that Van Gogh is famous for. Here’s the image:

Is click work for real? Some perspectives on task-based earning opportunities.

 It happened again, to me. In the course of seeking employment, I came across a platform with a contentious air about it; namely, it ended up involving me needing to put up my own investment funds in order to earn money, this time, in the form of commissions, from having completed a click work task. 

Part of the marketing materials from the click work platform I joined.

What is click work?

Given its surface features, click work seems like the ideal remote freelance work opportunity - daily earnings made from completing tasks that require no formal education or training, that is to say: it’s easy work. Sure it is, it just involves clicking. Such is the basic premise behind many an online platform, yet I’ll refrain from naming the one I’m involved with, for privacy reasons, namely, since I’m more a believer in the platform’s premise, despite some aspects of the initial selling points having gone unfulfilled. For example, the marketing material said that there would be no investing involved; this was partially untrue: I was “paid” commission money ($67 USD) that I could withdraw, upon completing the onboarding and training process, although I was instructed to bump up the balance in my work account, which started with a $0 balance, up to $100, which, it was claimed, is the minimum balance required to do tasks. 

The tasks, I would come to learn, were micro-investments (micro, for starting with $100) which earn a commission, starting at 0.5%, going up to 5%. The larger commission tasks would invariably put the user’s account in the negative, which I encountered, during the course of continuing training on the platform, further. At this point, I was instructed to contact Customer Service (CS) to deposit more money, in the form of USD, converted to Bitcoin, which I then withdrew, from my account, in to the company’s Bitcoin wallet - a trusting move, and, as I’d discovered, several days out, upon starting with the platform, one that would summon the chagrin of many an other click work platform inductee, who had gone on to write an article decrying the inferred iniquities of said click work platform(s), such as in this article I came across, serendipitously, just this morning. The similarities between what this author describes and my situation are uncanny. Going on, to research the contextual subject matter of the platform potentially being a scam, like this author writes about, and, which is the viewpoint and perspective that several other authors, and even the FTC, make out of the features described, here, to be hallmark features of an inevitable scam.

The image is blurred to ensure privacy for the platform.

I even consulted with ChatGPT and Gemini about the click work platform’s premises and claims, and they both strongly advised me that it was a scam. Now, granted, I had the same inclination, having recently been scammed, myself, with a credit card number processing and Bitcoin wallet transfer operation. Yet, this being the case, I came in to this opportunity fully aware and wary of promises. Despite this, I suppose I was feeling a bit adventuresome, and, being that click work is sometimes referred to as gamified, it resembles a game, or gambling, loosely, on one hand, although I felt that the platform deserved some credit, since, for one - I had been duly walked through the onboarding and training process, in this case, and the support personnel and onboarding representative were very responsive and intelligible - two features which I consider, subconsciously, perhaps, even, to be characteristic of well-run businesses. After all, for every one person who can see the bright side of the click work economy, there are dozens of naysayers and jilted participants who distrusted the entirety of the platform, particularly at the point at which it was discovered that personal financial investment was required, which, as I’ve stated, is where I happened to differ, in this case. 

Fayrouz Eldebani’s blog article, Click Work - It’s Complicated, featured on superrr.com.

By the way, the last link I just posted, “Click Work - It’s Complicated,” which is in support of click work for women and for other potentially disadvantaged worker demographics, I found, is a highly intelligent and insightful blog article that goes in to issues of feminism and post colonial work economy, as they pertain to click work. The article discusses click work as an accommodation of certain work-life balance traits of the subject demographics discussed, rather than that click work enterprises necessarily take advantage of people. I found that I could relate to the women and domestic workers, as such, myself, given that I’m committed, on a daily basis, to ensuring that the local pigeon flocks get fed - the ones that I can cover, and care for, at least. 

Sure, it’s frustrating to see an account balance go in to the negative, thus requiring a personal investment, in order to reap the profit and returns, or commissions. Perhaps, even, some of the platforms involving click work recruiters contacting people, truly are scams, as a basis. So far, I find some promise in the platform I became acquainted with, with some short term benchmarks to come, which I can update on, when the time arises. What I would offer, as a suggestion, should one come across a click work opportunity, as a job-seeking, vulnerable person, is to take account of one’s own limits and boundaries; for example, “do I have a reasonable amount of savings I can put in to such a thing as this,” as one of the questions one might ask, and know, of one’s self. Fortunately, the platform I’m involved with involves a spread of up to 300% of the user’s work account balance, and I find, so far, that having several hundred dollars available, perhaps $1,000, or so, is sufficient to cover most any circumstances encountered, in the course of completing a batch of 40 tasks, as the costs rise, at times, during the course of completing the tasks, and thus require reinvesting money. It takes some trust of the company that the user is involved with, and some common sense, as to what can be afforded, and risked, in such as situation, given that, at least, in my case, the funds are real, withdrawable funds that go back in to my own Bitcoin wallet.

A look at the history of the transactions in my work account, along with the commission payments. 

Right now, I’m stuck on this $956 transaction, with a negative $524.56 balance, which I had to do some work on, in order to clear the transaction. I had $431.44 in my account, at the time I encountered that transaction. The profit for that transaction will be $76.48 once I clear the transaction, though. Not bad, given my usual experiences with investing. 

All in all, I see the situation as that, for the potential of the proclaimed earnings to be real, it is, somewhat a gamble, but, I suppose, in my case, I was somewhat up to the challenge of discovering whether or not things work out as stated. One of the techniques I’m planning on employing, moving forward, is keeping my initial work account balance at $100, to start, and withdrawing funds, mid-batch, should I get a “rush” order, which comes with a higher (5%) commission, although it puts my account in the negative, requiring me to deposit more funds - once I complete the transaction, I’m planning on withdrawing funds, again, so the 300% limit threshold doesn’t become unmanageable. I’m still learning the platform, but since I was able to withdraw real Bitcoin funds in to my own CashApp Bitcoin wallet, I have some confidence that the platform works, and is functional, at least, for as long as the site stays up, and for as long as I stay in touch with CS and my onboarding agent. I think that the AI Chatbots are perhaps biased towards erring on the side of caution, lest they stir up controversy for users, with what ends up being poor advice, because, of course, it’s easily foreseeable that a scammer could potentially shut down a site, or deny functionality to a user, and steal their funds. For all I know, perhaps other platforms paled in comparison, with their policies regarding order limits on dollar amounts, or there may have been something else wrong about sites that other people encounter. I find that the site I’m on has very responsive customer service, and the onboarding experience flowed smoothly, as well - all good signs, so far. 

In essence, the concepts at play seem to mirror that of Liquidity Mining, in Decentralized Finance. Here are some basic concepts pertaining to Liquidity Mining, from Google Search AI Overview:

I deposited the money, the next morning (today), and I completed the transaction that had gotten me stuck, previously. Here, you can see the $956 balance, plus the $76.48 profit I had received.

This is where I ran in to a snag with the company. They denied my withdrawal, because they have a policy that says I have to complete a full batch of orders on the day I want to do a withdrawal, which they didn’t tell me about. Since I don’t want to put any more money in to this, I guess I have to chalk it up to that this whole thing I got involved with was a gamble, which I lost money on.

Dingo and Pigeon Smoking Pair Fan Art Page.

 One of my favorite fan art themes is the dingo and pigeon sharing a smoke, while the bird is perched on top of dingo’s head. In doing some creative exercises on my iPad Pro, I familiarize myself with some of the extended use applications and how to manipulate images, while working from a generative AI backdrop, which allows for huge shifts in temperament and theme, at a moment’s notice. Some of the images evoke notions of things we have seen before, such as cartoons, perhaps an artist, or an art movement in history. Using this simple subject matter as inspiration, I try to discover, invent, or manipulate the thematic and compositional contents of the premise, and it serves as a rich playground for uncovering new meaning.

One of the original Generative AI renders of the dingo and pigeon smoking pair.

This is the basic vector image ink-drawing-styled template, from the Vector Q app.

An SCN app manual alpha channel glitch image.

I found inspiration in the simple lines and playful colors in this randomly generated version.

The triangles and shading in this image caught my eye.

I liked the humorous cartooning lines, here, to top off some fortunate shading effects, of the triangles.

I played around with this image, a fair amount, but I kept the divergent contrasting color theme somewhat intact.

I felt that this dusty rose vector cut out, with a blank background, would be the type of image I could use, later on, as compositing material, in to new compositional settings. 

I liked the bold primitives and gaudy color palette of this one, that I worked on.

This was a randomly generated image that came out pretty neat.

The Fauvist allusions in this randomly generated image are glaringly apparent, I feel.

The dingo and pigeon smoking pair pack of cigarettes.