Finding me elsewhere on the internet

"Sorry I've been posting here less lately..." is something every blogger must say from time to time, and I'm saying it now. I'm finding this format kind of intimidating to post in, though I've got the seeds of ideas for a few longform posts. I'm not going to entirely retire this blog, but I want people to know where they can (virtually) hang out with me on a more casual basis in between posts :)

purpleshinyriv.tumblr.com is a mix of reblogs of things I think are cool, chatter about the Myst games/fandom, small life updates, and stuff-I-make-related posts. You can follow with a Tumblr account, or via RSS.

  @PurpleshinyRiv is my Twitter handle. Pretty similar mixture of stuff as my Tumblr activity, but in bite-sized chunks.

 I'm keeping Facebook/G+ mainly for people I've met at least once in real life. If we know each other but you don't know how to find me there, let me know!

 And finally, if you're just watching my website for Myst-related jewelry announcements, you can sign up for my Myst-related email newsletter to be the first to find out when I have new stuff for sale :)

A big batch of pendants for the Unwritten RPG Kickstarter

This is definitely the most copies of a single design I’ve ever made. I’m still kind of boggling at the size of this pile of shinies that I somehow created! I’m glad to be done so I can ship these off to the Unwritten folks to send to their Kickstarter backers (and artists/co-creators!) ^_^

(For those not familiar with Myst Online/Uru, the design on the pendants appears as a floor mosaic in one of the buildings in the game.)

I’ve learned a lot about how I work while finishing this project—I do things burstily (and that’s OK!), in batches of 8ish things at a time, 1 batch/week is a pretty sensible pace although more can be done in an overlapping fashion if need be. I figured out a lot of useful fiddly etching things, and an all-in-one design for the bail that doesn't require soldering--definitely a win for mass-production.

And I realized that maybe instead of worrying about not being able to make as many fannish things as there are fans (and feeling like a failure for potentially leaving some people disappointed), I can focus on the awesomeness of making things in the first place. On how every time I make a tangible artifact from this quirky little universe we love and another fan gets to have it, that universe shifts closer to ours, and the world is a better (dorkier, shinier) place.

I’m going on vacation in a little over a week, but when I get back at the end of the month I have a lot of ideas about making fannish things out of metal more regularly :)