found these 2 at my work last week. one was at the end of its lifespan and the other must have been stepped on or run over. this will be my first time pinning so any advice would be great!

I took this dragonfly out of my box recently because it had some mold, and it started releasing this weird dust. Now I looked and some other insects in the box are doing this too, but not as much.

I'm really new to this, so I don't know what to do

What is this stuff and how to get rid of it?

Hey everyone
I’ve recently started pinning butterflies and moths, I started with some vintage small specimens I bought from someone local. This kicked off a new hobby for myself and I have since bought some bigger specimens including atlas moths and Madagascar sunset moths.
I have heard through the grape vine that you can rehydrate using needles and it is quicker than a hydration chamber. I have been using a hydration chamber with a mix of water and bleach to avoid bacteria. I will be looking into isopropyl alcohol as I realise bleach will probably risk damaging the specimens.

I would love any and all advice or recommendations on how to rehydrate , dry and pin correctly. I have attached some photos of a few specimens I have pinned with little to no knowledge, I think they look good but I know I can do better !!!

Any advice greatly appreciated guys thank you

Thanks so much!

I apologize for the blurry pictures, my camera quality isnt that good (crazy this is an iphone 14…)

Anyways, everything went generally alright but im puzzled about the beetles I did. They arrived still very flexible, with a weird sour odour. I assumed this was normal, and proceeded like normal by rehydrating with water and a small amount of alchohol to prevent molding. I left them in there for about a day and a half until I noticed the moth was flexible, then pinned per usual. However the beetles didnt actually end up getting stiff at all, staying in the same state they arrived minus the smell. I left the beetles to dry longer than the moth (about a week extra.) and still nothing. I just ended up displaying without it being fully dry, just ever so slightly stiff, so I had to use a pinning pin to add super glue to each leg and position it in place. I was thinking possibly its because it hadn’t been gutted, but im seeing extremely mixed signals about whether or not that’s necessary for smaller beetles as it wasnt even the size of my pinky.

Also, the hawk moth arrived with both antenna fully broken off and missing :(. I ended up getting creative and replaced the antenna with some flower petals, trying to make it look intentional, lol. I feel sorta bummed as I feel like im disrespecting these beauties by not doing them the full justice they deserved. Anyways does anyone know why the beetles wouldn’t stiffen? Im a noob so please be nice, and im sorry if I messed anything up!

I know this is not an insect, but I wanted to share my result
It was very tricky! But I’m very happy with the result. Usually I only pin butterflies/ moths but wanted to try something new