Catch Up: Catching Lightning in a Bottle

I pulled up some dandelion weeds along the street to use their sturdy roots to grow through the roof of the mouse's house. I stuck them in a glass jar for safe keeping and thought they looked really interesting (left). Somehow I got onto the idea of having "lightning in a bottle" on the shelf in Rana's kitchen.

It's an old expression which loosely means doing the impossible, like catching Lightning in a bottle. At first I thought of printing out an image of a lightning strike onto a sheet of acetate, rolling it up to slip down the bottle's neck and there be unfurled with long tweezers, etc. But the effect didn't read properly. There wasn't clearly an actual lightning strike in there when I tried that. Then I thought of the roots...

I painted them pure stark white. They were flexible enough to slip down and durable enough to keep all the fine veining attached. I added a stormy gray wool cap and a focused balloon up light.

Here's a faint faraway test of how it looks when the little light is flashed quickly underneath the painted roots in the bottle. Please cue your own thunder sound effects in your head while watching the storm in the upper right hand side, thank you...