Rachel Rogers-Rodgers

Taper & Trace Handmade soap company specializing in carefully crafted, small-batch soaps made with natural ingredients and with sustainable practices for a luxurious experience

Handmade soaps by my sister: www.taperandtrace.com

My jewelry: bio.site/elegantlyeccentric

Two necklaces with purple stone (amethyst) beads and white pearl beads, alternating, on a mannequin draped in open weave white linen.

Pale green stone beads, beryl, as a beaded chain on silver wire, on a white mannequin.

Long dangly Ancient Roman replica earrings with large teardrop shaped pearls, a green stone, and a round pearl at the top as part of the custom double hook earwire.

Avoiding big retailers this holiday season?

Consider small, unique gifts from small, struggling artists. There are a lot of us right now who are not having an easy time.

Want to recommend a small shop or creative? Drop a link below!

Part of my display of replica small finds, trade goods, and personal items at VJCL 2025, with Legio XX.

Presenting at this event is such a delight!

Ink and watercolor illustration of a bone awl on white mixed media paper. Copyright Rachel Rogers-Rodgers, 2025.

RPGers: how realistic do you like for crafting in a game to be?
1. Handwaved/ probably magic/ what even are these materials?
2. Semi-realistic but simplified,
3. Fairly realistic and only somewhat simplified,
4. Here's a list of tools you'll need, welcome to an interactive wikiHow article
#indiegame

Plastic bags full of gold-tone earrings on painted craft paper vintage-style tags.

A plastic folding table covered in many rows of white paper boxes with bars of multicolored artisan soap in front.

This weekend was Christmas elf time. (I did not wear ears this time.)

That's 177 pairs of earrings (mine) and 270 bars of soap (my sister's) finished and packaged up for upcoming holiday markets. Cheers and happy sales, my fellow overextended side hustlers!

Also coming next game engine version: character death. (It might be a fair trade for stacking items?)

Enjoy immortality while it lasts, Sparky the test wizard!

#DarkRelics #EidolonEngine #IndieGame #GameDevelopment

Screen capture of a dark gray text-based game interface. The lefthand panel includes a list of character stats for Sparky the Wizard. The center has features the test story, “gremlin mischief,” running on a timer. The right has an expansive inventory of blank squares representing items.

It’s a wee baby game engine, version 0.1!
That panel on the right will be filled with inventory object illustrations in the next version or two (stacking is also coming this update), and stories will be getting their own illustrations around the same time, though I still need to draw those.

Ink illustration on iron blacksmith tongs on a sketch pad in a leather book, with a pair of tongs on top, on a workbench surrounded by pens and pencils.

Inktense pencils and paint pans are fun. The colors are, as branded, definitely intense, and I find myself using them more like gouache than watercolor or ink. For what I’m doing, I like the result on their own, or as an underpainting for realistic work.
Enjoy a doodle of some hand-wrought tongs.

Screenshot of a Google Drive folder containing 19 images: rings with brightly colored stones, potion jars/bottles in different colors, plants, and some odds and ends meant for a fantasy game’s inventory.

Dark Relics Games inventory object illustration project, 19/???!

We added a foraging story last week, so I’m planning out assortments of plants for PCs to find.

Mostly ink, colored pencil, and Krita. I just got some Derwent Inktense pencils and paint pans to add to the mix, too- they’re fun.

Screen capture of a Google Drive folder containing four illustrations: a brass ring with a green stone, a metal oil lamp, a leather backpack, and a silver ring with a dark teal stone. Art by Rachel Rogers-Rodgers for Dark Relics Games, 2025.

Here are the first few inventory item illustrations for our future adventurers! Ink on mid and heavyweight sketchbook paper, digitally edited in Krita.

Drawings by R. Rogers-Rodgers (created by a nerdy human, not generative AI) for Dark Relics Games.

A whole bunch of and brown hickory nuts

Nuts.

(Okay, technically drupes.)

White plastic palette with multicolored ink drops and smears

Uh-oh, what’s this? Dusting off neglected and antiquated art skills? Me?

In an era of AI art, ask around your office to see if anyone has, say, a ginormous stash of inks and pastels that can be used instead.

Time to illustrate a fantasy game’s inventory. More about that coming soon! :)

Not A Bad Life Mobile App — Auspex Labs Inc. Are you having a good day? Are you having a bad day? Chart your days with color coded dots and jot down your thoughts to a scruffy little rescue cat named Skippy in this micro-journaling app.

www.auspex-labs.com/not-a-bad-life

Fluffy black cat with white feet lounging belly up on an off-white sofa.

Illustration of a fluffy black and white cat on a field of red and green dots, with a thought bubble asking “how was your day?” on a gray background. Includes Apple App Store and Google Play buttons, as well as “Not a Bad Life” and Auspex Labs Inc. logos.

Meet Skippy, my little fluffy rescue cat pal of a few years, now, and star of a new mindfulness-oriented micro-journaling app., Not a Bad Life.
He’s a sweet boy, and is this cute in real life. Here’s proof:
#CatsOfBluesky #MobileApp #BringYourPetToWorkDay?

This is a little quartz crystal cluster I found many years ago, in my grandparents’ yard in the northern Shenandoah Valley. It’s cute. Please enjoy.
#rockhounding #rockphotos

A blue-green, pistachio green, and white rock with brittle fibrous crystals and occasional small brown crystals.

A blue-green, pistachio green, and white rock with brittle fibrous crystals and occasional small brown crystals, with photo scale.

A blue-green, pistachio green, and white rock with brittle fibrous crystals and occasional small brown crystals.

Meet Fluffy! Fluffy is a piece of asbestiform actinolite with magnetite and metabasalt/meta-andesite (greenstone) from the Catoctin Formation in Virginia.

Fluffy lives sealed in a plastic bag, in its own box, when not being photographed.
#RocksOfBluesky #Rockhounding #HazardousMaterials

Last week we learned that 6 of our active NEH awards—totaling $789k in unspent funds—were immediately terminated by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.This is obviously a blow, and a serious one, to our work.But we will carry on. To see our terminated grants rrchnm.org/news/carryin...

Green-grey rock with some orange iron-stained dirt, and small round pockets of dark green crystals.

Grey-green rock next to a 2 inch photo gauge.

I enjoy rockhounding and have been taking photos of some of my finds, so enjoy!

Today’s rock is a metabasalt (or meta-andesite) with epidote amygdules, Catoctin Formation.

OpenStax | Free Textbooks Online with No Catch OpenStax offers free college textbooks for all types of students, making education accessible & affordable for everyone. Browse our list of available subjects!

Barnes and Noble College is trying to charge students $15 to digitally rent an OER (CC BY 4.0) textbook. 🤦🏻
NOVA SOC 200 students: you do not have to pay for this book unless you want a printed copy. openstax.org/details/book...

I think my tiny ornamental pond needs some proper ~10 ft.+ tall cyperus papyrus this summer.

It is, at least, a fun way to procrastinate on this fine Sunday evening. I’ll figure out how to winter it over indoors later (zone 6b woes).

I also just impulse-ordered a long pepper (piper longum) vine.

Travel mug, grapefruit, mini blueberry waffles, and an iPad on a table in an empty dining room.

Perk to crashing early after the first day at the conference.

Still Life with First Breakfast.

Tuppi hung out with History Club at the Loudoun NOVA Campus. Thanks, Tuppi!

Santa Claus vs. Lucius Cornelius Sulla- He has a list. He’s checking it twice. Knows who’s been naughty or nice. Is coming to town.

Please enjoy my very favorite Christmas meme, and to those who celebrate, have a lovely holiday.

Does uninstalling Windows 11 count as “defenestration”?

Amazon box by a leaf-covered driveway in the woods.

‘Tis the season for overextended, overburdened shippers/carriers. Order and ship gifts early, be kind, be patient, check tracking, and adjust expectations.

The USPS is already running a few days slow (1-2 day delays in some distribution centers), and FedEx has stopped getting out of the truck.

Brian Blessed as Caesar Augustus in I, Claudius. Quinctilus Varus... WHERE ARE MY EAGLES!!!

youtu.be/f-ohKuKy4_s?...

lol

Photo of a Tuppi cuneiform tablet plushie and a scaled down replica of a Cretan cup with a 3D printed statue of Baal Haddu and some whittled cuneiform styluses in it, on a sheepskin.

Winter break plan: Bronze Age mischief and nonsense. #Tuppi #BaalHaddu
Pottery by:
@reannagteine.bsky.social :)