No kidding! I set up for a sunset timelapse once and a whole family of squirrels decided my tripod leg was the perfect scratching post. Got twenty minutes of shaky blur. Another time I left a camera out overnight for some milky way shots and a deer licked the lens around 3 AM. Just a giant blurry tongue filling every frame. Nature always finds a way to mess with your gear.

That's a classic DIY pitfall. Did they use a single light source or just rely on room lights? Shadows can hide all sorts of misses. What type of wax was it, the kind that dries fast or slow? Makes me wonder if a different method would've caught the miss. Like, did they consider using a work light on a pole like in warehouses?

That's a clever way to reuse fabric. An old leather jacket makes a surprisingly rugged cover for a notebook. It gives things a second life with way more character.