from egg to beetle bling
Keeping multiple flower beetle species as pets and providing them with a carefree and happy bug life :) !
It takes about a year to rear a beetle larva into an adult beetle, so you could say it is a very time consuming hobby. But boy, it is so rewarding when that perfect beetle finally emerges.
Sadly, adult beetles only have a life span of a couple of months. I'd regret to see such beauty go to waste, so in 2015 I decided to do something creative with these 6 legged jewels and started eternalizing them post mortem in wearable pieces of jewelry.
I learned how to prep & mount them symmetrrically and practised techniques with resin and learned by trial and error.
While the beetle hobby only grew in number of species I keep, so did the size of the beetles. I evolved from rearing small to medium flower beetle species to large flower beetles.
Naturally, these don't fit in a pendant, so I started on frames and domes as well.
So here I am, rearing beetles and making beetle bling!*
*I can vouch for their care free happy beetle life and natural death, as opposed to so many beetles that are taken from the wild and put in killing jars - only to be sold for the dried insect market which we find so popular today.
