Bjornkult shrinky dinks!

Last month I had the pleasure of attending an artmaking party where a surplus of supplies were made available to guests, along with a pretty good refrigerator & bar full of creative lubricants. (Being very NorsePlay, I brought a Danish Raspberry Kringle to share, which got eaten first!) Our host scored some off-brand Shrinky Dinks, which he announced most enthusiastically ... but I had no actual idea what that was, somehow bereft of such a thing growing up, though I wasn't the only one there who didn't know what that was exactly.

Once I got through evaluating the room for flirtworthiness, I grabbed the sheet of hard plastic material, a set of fancy colored pencils, and went to town, taking an unexpected three hours to finally create this:

Above is the final result with the sunlight from behind through the opaque drawing surface! Note the scale compared to my fingertips.

Using a portion of the holster design that I made a matching T-shirt from, plus the Bjornkult text banner logo from a differing NorsePlay shirt and hat, this came out pretty great given my mostly untried art skills:

Close up of the paper's line details before getting oven shrunk to less than half its size:

There was something really satisfying in making this, of stepping just outside of my comfort zone, plus getting to create in a group craft night type setting that sort of brings out one's competitiveness on a minor level. Also, I zoned in pretty hard, falling into a mostly-focused meditative state for way longer than I thought I'd need to, and coming out the other side of it feeling really good about manifesting in a new (to me) medium.

The guests were pretty impressed and asked me about it, whereupon those same beverages that allowed me to loosen up and execute my shrink art sort of got in the way of my explaining the Berserkir warrior bear cult, and the art's inspiration from the Vendel Period's Torslunda helmet patrices with the iconic Berserker designs on them. Hanging it in my front window the next morning though more than made up for that.

[NorsePlay would like to thank Ruben & Dani for the opportunity to make this, and their great party!]

#    #    #

Guillermo Maytorena IV knew there was something special in the Norse Lore when he picked up a copy of the d'Aulaires' Norse Gods and Giants at age seven. Since then he's been fascinated by the truthful potency of Norse Mythology, passionately read & studied, embraced Ásatrú, launched the Map of Midgard project, and spearheaded the neologism/brand NorsePlay. If you have employment/opportunities in investigative mythology,  field research, or product development to offer, do contact him.