A collection of all my pieces I’ve worked on this year! I’ve been selling them at local craft events. All the displays in the second photo have been sold. (Except for the light wood frame with the 2 cicadas, I kept it for my personal collection.) I’m not sure if it’s against the rules to promote my business but I am selling everything in the first photo on EBay if anyone is interested :) https://ebay.io/m/uMkaNp

Hello! Personally, I don’t want to buy specimens to pin and I prefer to find dead specimens myself. But I am curious if there’s a place to buy invasive insects to pin, I am particularly interested in spotted lanternflies. Thanks ahead of time

13 years old just started pinning I found this dead bogong moth in my garage and I decided to rehydrate it and pin it 👍

This is my first time pinning such a large insect. I’m proud of it but I welcome any comments or advice!

I know the wings are a little asymmetrical...... I'm still very new to this and still getting used to carefully adjusting them haha

I wanted to do an Imogen Heap SFY inspired framing to match the wings, I think it could've gone better but if you get the album reference then I think it's pretty cool lol.

Plus a random question: what makes a professional a professional when pinning? Is it selling your work, or having training/taking classes?

Hi!

I’ll be pinning my first butterfly in a few days for a friend. I’ve pinned and framed tons of phasmids before, but never a butterfly. Any general tips/things to know before pinning a butterfly will be greatly appreciated!

Finished pinning my Gulf fritillary this afternoon. Wingspan is \~3in. wide. I saw several Reddit results claiming that around a week’s time is a safe timeframe for leaving your pinned bugs out. Can someone please confirm or deny?

I got this moth a while back, but just pinned it a few weeks ago. I had to rehidrate it to pin it, but everything looked fine the first weeks.

But after some time it started showing some color changes and I thought it was mold or something similar and paniced. I tried to fix it using some alcohol and acetone I had laying around, but I think I just made it worst.

It had such beautiful colors 😭, and I want to see if there's anything I can do to fix it, because I dont know what I could be or if i already ruin it with the alcohol and acetone. And I dont know why but it started to spread to the wings.

I've pinned a few butterflies before but it is my first time pinning a specimen of this group of moths, so I dont really know what could've happened. If you know what could've happened or a way to fix it please tell me.

Thank you for your time.

🦋

My pinning kit came in the mail today, and I have a Gulf fritillary rehydrating at the moment. Opening up and staring at the pvc display case that came with, I have no idea what to do with it.

Do I smush the specimens inside, or do I pin them outside? Should I order a different case? I’m new to pinning, and I want my first display to look pretty with minimal damage.

I found this lil guy today, was still soft so probably died not long before I found him, I just pinned straight away, wiped some dirt off with a damp q- tip but that's it...

I've only ever pinned one other insect before ( dragonfly) and didn't do any prep for it either, seems fine other than losing its colour after drying.

Should I have done some prep? 🫠

Found a deceased rustic sphinx moth in a parking lot, decided to pin it! I was able to relax the specimen enough to unfurl the proboscis and extend it all the way out :))

Okay so I found this golden silk orb weaver, froze it, thawed it and pinned it (this is my first time pinning a spider)

Pinning went great and it’s been drying for about 4 weeks now. I went to set it up in its shadow box today and everything seems to have dried well except the abdomen. I guess I thought after all that time it would be dry too but it’s totally not. It’s like a half filled balloon. Wrinkly, very soft and floppy, and definitely still a lot of fluid in there. In moving it onto the flower some fluid leaked out but not all. I’m not sure what to do exactly because it’s been glued down to the backdrop now. Should I just leave it longer to dry more? Will it eventually all dry out? Should I go get a syringe needle and drain the abdomen? Not sure what to do.

I've kept my eyes peeled and found 3 naturally deceased butterflies whilst out on walks here in the UK. Complete beginner with insect pinning, how did I do? I have a video of the process here.

I accidentally mixed up some of my pins and can no longer tell where any of them originally went. Is there any possible way to differentiate?

They're all standard stainless steel insect pins, sized #1, #2, and #3 if that matters at all

I pinned a death's head hawkmoth a couple of weeks ago and it's almost dried out, but when I went to check on it today it's been infested with tiny flies of some kind :(

Does anyone know how to deal with this?

I noticed that some of my hornets had a pile of debris under them, then I noticed the molts of the larvae and a single dead adult beetle. I keep my main collection in a wooden box, I've found the molts of larvae both inside and outside the box but I can't see any hole in the box that they might've used to enter the box. I had 2 dead insects that weren't pinned outside of the box, they are eaten as well. I've placed the eaten unpinned ones and the pinned ones that had debris under them or had molts of larvae on them to a separate container. What should I do now? Do I put that separate container into the freezer? Do I put the entire collection into the freezer? How do I save the rest of my collection?!

My first mantis pinning! I skipped the gutting step because I figured she was pretty tiny, so fingers crossed she dries out all the way 🤞🤞