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Wood Spider's booth is just for funsies.

There's no gambling aspect to it; it's mainly for fun, to pass the time, and perhaps to keep the foals entertained. She has set up a sort of bower (with Beetleshell's help; the thing is crawling with insects, and though they are pretty, to Wood Spider they're also useful), and within it is a pile of carefully-scavenged pinecones, a turtle shell full of sticky sap, and an assortment of, well ... stuff:

* Paints made from mashed berries
* Pretty insect shells
* Spiderwebs
* Leaves, flowers, branches
* Feathers
* Shiny shells and rocks
* Not-so-shiny shells and rocks
* And an assortment of other things, contributed by kin far and wide.

Anykin who so desires can grab a pinecone and decorate it however they see fit. Wood Spider will hand out 1 token just for participating! Each day, Beetleshell -- as the booth's guest -- will pick 2 pinecones to receive an additional token.

At the end of the event, exceptionally pretty or otherwise interesting pinecones might be blessed by Wood Spider herself, thereby becoming useful trinkets or charms for the kin artist to wear and use.

IC Note: You can interact with either Wood Spider or Beetleshell when making your pinecone. Posting in this thread with a bit of an RP element is totally fine and is, in fact, encouraged! Wood Spider is a petite, sweet legendary who has not a mean bone in her body and has the personality of a preschool teacher, all encouragement and enthusiasm. Beetleshell is decidedly less friendly, but not mean -- just strange.

And watch out for that giant worm -- there's a reason it's named Rips-Into ...

Pinecones A-Plenty!
Entry: pinecone here!


Walk this Road greets the doe and Mare with a polite nod. "Good afternoon." she says, inspecting everything laid out.

It takes her several minutes but she finally finds the perfect pine cone. Carefully plucking it up she sets it down on a nearby stump, then heads over to pick her materials.

Seeing the paints Walk decides she should do that first, so the pine cone can dry while she selects her decorations. Choosing some colors she sets to work. Carefully she uses a feather dipped in paint to apply the colors, being sure to get into all the nooks and crannies.

Sitting on her haunches she looks at her work, liking how the colors blend and overlap. Unknown to her, she's gotten a fair amount of paint on herself as well, mostly around her mouth and nose, with a few drips and splotches also on her chest and front hooves.

Standing she goes over to the decorations, taking even longer to select them then it took to find the right pine cone. Each container is carefully rummaged through, she doesn't want to damage the items she doesn't use after all, and several items are selected. As she finds each "just right" thing she takes it over to her stump, gently setting it down. Last she picks the feathers, selecting colors she finds pleasing.

Materials selected she starts adding them to the now dry pine cone. Giving each feather a good dip in the sap first, she then sticks them into the cone, wedging them between the scales. This causes a good amount of the sap to squish out, but she's ready for that. With care, Walks picks up an item and gently squished it into the sap.

Finished she gently blows on the pine cone, to dry the sap a bit faster. This done Walk picks it up by the stem, gingerly walking over to Wood Spider and showing it to her, her expression wordlessly - she won't risk dropping it - asking if she'd done good.

Wood Spider and Beetleshell both watch with interest as Dropwing and Walk This Road approach, carefully create their pinecones, and submit them for review.

Beetleshell looks especially charmed with the reverence with which Dropwing approaches her -- the kiokote even seems to pass her cave worm's muster, as it clicks its mandibles once and retreats into a shady portion of undergrowth.

Beetleshell, charmed and with golden eyes twinkling, nudges the pinecone gently with her nose and smiles -- about as much as she ever does, but a smile all the same.



Wood Spider, not to leave anyone left out, glances at Beetleshell and then gestures with a toss of her head to Walk This Road's pinecone. "This one is just perfect! Look how the colors blend together! She spent so long on this."

"Ihopeyoulikeit," said Dropwing, the words coming out in a rush.

The smile caused an instant reaction of a flushed face and shuffling hooves. "I'll see you again! I hope. I mean, I'll be back. If you don't mind. I'm Dropwing. Um, goodbye!"

And then she was off racing, already planning to do a better job next time.

Pinecones A-Plenty!
Entry: Lily had to admit: she wasn't at all an artist. Or a creative type. But she had good taste aplenty. She picked a smooth brown pine cone, nodding to the does. Okay, what first? Ah, yes - she scooped up a leaf and took into it a paste made from eggs, water, and a lot of crushed white beetle shells. It was very pretty, she thought: pale and lovely. She drizzled it lightly over her pinecone, just enough that the tip of each little ridge looked like it'd been dusted with snow. Next she took a number of tiny little golden-rocks and dried golden berries, pasting them onto the pine cone at arbitrary intervals. It was going to match Lily herself in color: she knew she was beautiful, after all. Over all of that she draped a lacy spiderweb, and affixed it with a slightly bigger golden stone.

But it was missing something, still. Ooh, yes - was that an intact butterfly wing? It matched Lily perfectly. She picked it up and dipped its end in the sticky sap, and then adhered it to the base of her pinecone. For good measure she dipped the little stem into a yellow berry paint.

She had to wait for it to dry, but she was satisfied with the result when it was. Did she really have to give it to those two? She'd dearly like to keep it.

Well, she'd at least show it to them and see what they thought. She loped closer with her pine cone's stem held gingerly in her mouth, and she dropped it onto a bed of yellow leaves for examination. "I hope this is appropriate," she demurred, but she already knew her pine cone was stunning.

Mind Rain approached the booth curiously, lured by the many pretty pine cone creations coming from the booth and the numerous options laid out for decoration. He watched for a few moments before quietly choosing a pine cone of his own and setting to work. He had never really tried anything artistic before, but he was inspired by the wide selection. Unfortunately, he was a bit too interested in much of it -- he spent quite some time looking up and down the spread of accessories, admiring many of them, nudging them with his nose or peering at them from different angles and admiring how the light changed them.

After a very long time sitting with a plain pine cone, the blue buck finally made a selection. He decided to give the cone's base some color first, choosing a bluish-purple berry paint and carefully dabbing at some of the cone's scales. He created a swipe of color at the top of the pine cone, then around the middle, then wrapped around to the bottom. He had thought to paint more colors, but sniffed when he finished the purple streak and decided, inwardly, that he wanted to leave some of the natural brown exposed (and, if he were honest, the route of painting many colors was beginning to seem a bit tedious when he could add color in so many other ways).

He chose a strikingly red leaf for his next decoration, and carefully stuck it between the pine cone's scales near the top. He gave it a look of consideration before turning to choose another leaf, this one a bright gold, and slipped the new leaf between scales at the bottom of the pine cone. He turned his head at it, eyes narrowing, and reached for another leaf -- another red one, though with more orange and of a new shape, and stuck it beside the golden leaf. Liking this color scheme, he turned the cone and added another red leaf and a yellow to the other side as well.

Returning to the "front" of the cone, he considered the offered accessories again. Compared to the leaves he'd already chosen, he saw a pile of petals that looked quite soft and pretty, and nodded his head at them. Yes, they would be a good contrast; and their dark pinkish color seemed, to him, a decent bridge between the red leaves and the purple paint, even if the shade wasn't quite perfect. He selected a few and slipped them between the scales as well, varying space between them and looking for ways to move the eye across the pine cone. He was rather enjoying deciding where to put each splash of color against the brown background, and smiled at his progress. Perhaps he should try this more often.

Stepping back from his pine cone, Mind Rain admired his work so far -- but it was missing something. He wanted to give it... something more. Something different. A bit of flair. He glanced down the booth and considered the options; when his eyes fell upon a pile of branches of various sizes, he had a wonderful thought. He sorted through the pile and found an appropriately small stick to still work with his pine cone and brought it back to his station. He wedged the stick carefully in the middle of the his creation and then went to find the spiderwebs he had noticed earlier. When he reached them, he realized that he... wasn't sure how to attach them in the way he wanted. He couldn't carefully bring them back to his pine cone, as they would easily become a mess in his fur. He peered at them and then turned back and decided, instead, to bring his pine cone to the spiderwebs. After several attempts to attach the webs and ending up with masses of tangled stickiness, he was at last able to get a few strands to cling to the top of the branch and hang fairly freely, ready for his next step.

The blue buck returned to the last of his petals and leaned over them, dangling the spiderwebs until they aligned where he wanted them to, then pulled to the side slightly so the webs would roll and pick up the petals. It succeeded surprisingly well, and he smiled and set the pine cone down. He still thought it needed a bit of something -- some shimmer might be nice! Mind Rain remembered some dragonfly wings he had seen earlier, and happily trotted off to find them, returning with two and setting them gently beside his pine cone. He had to figure out how to attach the wings, as the spiderweb strands were mostly clinging to each other. He decided to reverse the process and attached a few spiderwebs to the wings first (which seemed easier now after his earlier trials with the webs), and then worked to attach the strands of stickiness to the top of his stick with the other webbing.

When he'd finally succeeded, he sat back and admired his pine cone. A pleasant little smile crossed his muzzle as he watched the petals and wings turn on their webs, and admired the splashes of color and texture against the brown of the base pine cone. He looked up at the two running the booth, "I think I did fairly well." He sighed a bit, "Thank you for the experience." He looked back and nudged his pine cone a bit, considering how best to carry it home.

IC Note:

Since my booth hasn't had so many visitors, I'm awarding all of you who participated after my RP post +2 tokens for submitting a pinecone with an RP response!

--phoe