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.
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| 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) |
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| 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, in the works, 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** |
