Showing posts with label geekery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label geekery. Show all posts

Coins Around the World

I've always thought it's cool when artists do a series all based around one theme. Since I've begun bead weaving I've done one complete series (my Elements Necklaces), I've done a few pieces that I classify as Geekery, and now I'm starting on a new and exciting series! It's called "Coins Around the World."

My fascination with coins started when I was young. Dad taught me to look for wheat head pennies and buffalo nickels. Other than those two specific examples I never really got into the whole "collecting for value" thing with coins, but I have always kept a container with any "odd" coins I've found. Some of those came from random coins that turned up in tills while I worked retail, others were collected as members of my family (or friends) traveled the world.

When my brother came home from Nepal recently I decided it would be fun to use some of the coins he had left over for jewelry...and then it hit me. "I have this collection of coins from around the world, I can do a whole series out of this!" So I went pawing through boxes to find where my collection had gotten stashed in all my moves these last few years and was amazed at how many I found!

I eventually sorted them all out into different bags by country, and it's quite the list!



I have:
Australia
Bahamas
Botswana
Canada
England
Euro
France
Fiji
Hong Kong
India
Liban
Mexico
Nepal
Netherlands
Russia
Singapore
Sri Lanka
USA
And a small bag of one's I haven't identified yet!

Some of the bags only have one coin in them (like Botswana) and some of them have a whole bunch! I have ideas for necklaces, bracelets, pendants, and earrings! There will definitely be some out of this collection I make for myself. In fact, I think the next one I make will be for me :)

I chose to have my first piece in the collection to a Mexican Peso. I was originally planning on doing a necklace with one of the Nepali coins, but I think I'm going to have to buy some beads to do what I want to with that one, and I knew exactly what I wanted to do with this Peso!


I used the colors of the Mexican flag (plus black) for this necklace. It's completely reversible, and the pendant comes off! It's in my Artfire shop if your interested :)

I look forward to sharing more of these with you over the next year! I have lots of other projects I want to do as well so I'll probably work one of these in ever couple of projects or so :)

A Productive 1st Quarter

I started out this year by setting myself a list of goals. I decided to only extend those goals through March, and then my plan was to reevaluate them. Why did I do things this way? Well, I firmly believe that one of the important things about goals is to be flexible. You never really know what's going to happen in life, and in 3 months things can change a lot! You can also learn a lot in that span of time. I'm currently in the process of revamping and rethinking my goals, and over the next week or so I'll be talking a lot about what I have or have not accomplished in the last quarter, and what my new goals are for the next quarter.

I've been keeping track of my goals (sometimes more faithfully, sometimes less so) using the site GoalForIt. One of my sets of goals has been "Crafty Goals." So today's post is about what I've accomplished in that area!

Crafty Goals: Accomplished

~ Elements Series - Wind Dancer - Number 2 in my Elements Series. Available in my Shop! $50.00


~ Create Purple and White woven earrings and bracelet for consignment - Currently Available in my consignment shop, custom requests are welcome though:) Earrings are $10, Bracelet is $25.


~ Create another woven bracelet for consignment - Currently Available in my consignment shop, custom requests are welcome though:) $25.00


~ Create orange and White woven earrings and bracelet for consignment. Currently Available in my consignment shop, custom requests are welcome though:) Earrings are $10, Bracelet is $25.


~ Elements series - Swiftly changing Waters - Number 3 in my Elements Series. Update: Sold! 4/5/09 Custom requests gladly taken - $40.00


~ Learn a new macrame knotting pattern. I must admit I'm not entirely sure how well I learned this one... This looks great, but I've been having troubles making a second one! Available in the shop I share with my Mom. $5.00


~ Heroes bracelet for Theresa - This was a custom order. I'm more than willing to make another one in any color scheme you might prefer! $25.00


~ New Geekery bracelet - Bracelet says "Etsyholic." Currently Available in my shop. Requests for custom sayings gladly taken. $25


It's been such a productive quarter I decided that I'll have to continue this post tomorrow! Until then my friends :)

Time Management and Relaxation


As I've been talking a lot about time management there's one thing I've said several times and, I realized today I wasn't listening to myself! That is, it's important to find time to relax.  If you let yourself get to stressed out, then you will lose your creative edge.  Besides, it's just plain not healthy in general!

I've had a really long couple of days, and I was really tired by the time my dear hubby and I got home today!  The good news is that we're pretty sure we've found an apartment :) Which is really exciting! We're going in tomorrow to do paper work :)

So as I sat down this afternoon I had a million projects that needed to be worked on, and I wasn't too motivated to start working on them, I was just too tired! So instead of catching up with my dear etsy bloggers team, instead of turning on my twitter deck and chatting, instead of writing, I simply turned on a Firefly episode and pulled out a weaving project.

Wait! I'm sure you see the inconsistency in this.  Yes, I know, I'm a work-a-holic. I've been told that many times. You don't need to remind me!

The plain and simple truth is that I find bead weaving really relaxing.  Well, as long as everything is going well with the project and I don't get too many thread tangles that is :P That's one of the reasons I fell in love with it in the first place.  I have many health problems and beading allows me to spend hours sitting still, relaxing, and letting go of my stress.

My usual problem, though, is that I usually work on my projects while sitting at the computer.  Which means I'm constantly getting interrupted because I get distracted by e-mail notifications, the forums, and twitter! As you can imagine that can be highly unproductive.  I'm working on this because I think it's a bad habit.  So I'm doing a lot more of ignoring e-mail and twitter for a period of time to work on a project.  Usually, though, it's been work for 15-20 mins, check everything, work again :P  I get a LOT more done that way, but it's not that relaxing.

Today I left a note for my etsy blogger friends so they'd know why I was gone, put up a quick comment on twitter, and simply bead wove and watched Firefly! I even had my laptop pushed far enough away that I wouldn't be very tempted to try and type!

It was sooooo relaxing! And I'm loving my project :) It's a combination of two goals I have for myself.  I spoke in an earlier post about my goal to try and complete one bead weaving project a week.  The necklace at the top of this post was my successful completion of that goal this last week :D

I've also had an idea for doing a line of bracelets that will fall under the "Geekery" section of Etsy! I have a LOT of ideas for this line, which is why I'm simply heading it under Geekery and not by the different shows ect.  The very first piece in this line is the bracelet I designed with the God Send symbol from the hit TV show Heroes.



I've also been working a series of other designs, but I needed to buy more seed beads before I could start. Today I finally got the last piece I needed to start on my first bracelet based off of a vidoe game! I should have it ready to show by next week.  No pictures tonight, I'm just too tired! I will tell you it's going to feature the character Link, from the Legenda of Zelda series.  It's an early version of Link, and my geeky brother helped me make sure that I had the details right.  I may be a geek - but he's and uber-geek and way better at the precise details than I am! Plus it's fun to involve him :) He's my geek consultant! 

I also have ideas for bracelets based off of Mario, Spiderman, Batman, Star Trek, Star Wars, and eventually, moving into the realm of dragons and faeiries :D That will take time though! Especially because these take a LOT more work to design and I'll probably alternate week by week doing a geek design with doing "pretty" or something else design that takes a little bit less planning!

Oh yes, and I'm also working on my first project for Team Big Damn Crafters, my team dedicated to the memory of the show Firefly (that I'm watching at the moment), and those will also end up listed under Geekery. :) And anything else that ends up being appropriate...

Can anyone say crafting ADHD? LOL

I'm also planning on learning an entirely new technique for me this week :P

For all those who've signed up for the newletter, I was planning on sending it out tonight, but I forgot my notes over at my parents house.  So I should be sending it out tomorrow.  Not signed up yet? There's a widget at the top of the blog! Make sure you go through the confirmation process so I get the notification! If you'd rather not do that, simply e-mail me at jedimarri@gmail.com, and I'll add you to the list! Incedentily, that's the e-mail address these will be coming from :P

Ok, off to chat some more with my Geek Consultant and work on my Link bracelet :)