Why I sold off a pile of cool supplies for almost nothing

At almost the last possible minute, I decided to bring something unusual (for me) to International Steampunk City: a box of watch parts and other supplies to sell to steampunk fans on a pay-what-you-like-or-can basis (which worked out in the end to an average of 45 cents per thing--almost certainly less than I paid for most of the bits in the box). Read on for why it made sense for me to get rid of a huge swath of my carefully-accumulated stash.

The impetus for this destash was me realizing that some of my supplies were not quiiiiiite right for me.

In the time since I acquired them, I've been moving my jewelry away from assembling existing bits together in novel ways, and towards metalwork pieces that I fabricate myself, with watch parts incorporated the way one might incorporate gemstones or wire filligree.

An earlier necklace of mine from my pre-metalsmithing days

A new necklace of mine, available on purpleshiny.etsy.com

This distinction may only make sense in my head, but it's a big deal to me. This is the way of making jewelry that I find really exciting and fulfilling--and there's a narrower range of parts that I'm interested in incorporating this way. Life is too short for supplies that don't light you on fire with inspiration! Once I realized this, I knew I needed to move a lot of my stash out from my workshop as efficiently as possible. I wanted to free up both physical and mental space so that I can focus on the components that fill me with joy (and that touch of slightly-fearful awe that propels me to improve my craft to be worthy of my materials).

The deeper reason for bringing the box of supplies to the festival was that I wanted to connect with other makers and tinkerers. It's no secret that I like geeking out about making things! And what better outlet for unwanted parts than folks who are dying to get their hands on that sort of thing and build something cool with them? I was so happy to give people a chance to sift through a box of interesting stuff that I knew they could use.

I hope that some of the 30 or so folks who took supplies home with them will speak up in the comments section! Tell me about the projects you're thinking of, or link to pictures of any work-in-progress or finished contraptions. I know I can't wait to see what you come up with!

Indoor photography

I'm still trying to clean up my living room and studio after the chaos of last weekend's con... but I managed to clear off the secondary studio table and construct a primitive lightbox. A lightbox is something for diffusing and reflecting light for getting better macro photography. There are plenty of online tutorials for making them (the one I made was similar to this or this). I also started exploring some of the manual settings on my digital camera (it's a Canon Powershot A610).



I still haven't figured out the best combination of settings, and I'm thinking of switching to a more neutral background--but as you can see, it's possible for me to take clear, adequately-lit photos with my camera and this lightbox. That means I can take Etsy photos without regard for the time of day or the weather! This makes the idea of working through my backlog of jewelry to list it a bit less intimidating.

To all who stopped by at International Steampunk City

Thanks so much to those who stopped by my table and my metalworking demo. It was so great to meet such cool steampunk fans--I'm honored that some of you bought my jewelry, and I hope that my demo was informative. And welcome to any new readers just encountering my blog for the first time! Tomorrow, I'll make a more substantial post about the weekend, but I wanted to kind of jump up and down and wave and grin at everyone one more time before I fall over and catch up on sleep :)

OH! If you have any pictures of me, my table/demo, etc, please email them to me or put a link in the comments or something, OK?

Can I get there by Candlelight? (Finding me at International Steampunk City)

You can reach International Steampunk City from the Boston area by public transportation! Here's one way to get to my table via bus and a bit of walking:


View Larger Map

Once you get to the Watch Factory, there should be signs to point you towards the vendor area.

Final outfit for International Steampunk City!

There are a bunch of neat little details in this costume that I'm really proud of.

The back:

I laced through safety pins with stretchy cord to give the vest a more fitted shape. The folded fabric looks kind of awkward in this photo, but it's not really so strange in person. The silk of the vest is reinforced underneath with strips of felt. The gears really are ones I "just happened to have lying around my workshop", which makes me feel almost like an authentic steampunk person or something :p

I embroidered a couple of swirly/gear designs on the front:


Hope to see some of you at the convention! Look for my table in the back half of the vendor area in the Watch Factory. I'm also hoping to do a demo on the common on Sunday in the early afternoon, making a big, textured copper pendant using a Waltham Watch Company watch movement :)

Making purple frames

I'm going to write a bit about the process of making some jewelry display frames for my International Steampunk City table. At first I thought this would be a tutorial, but I kept improvising things and running out to CVS for a stapler and changing my mind about what fabric to use, so I realized it wouldn't be a great how-to. Instead, I'm just going to show some pictures I took, and talk about what I did and what was going through my head while I was working.

The plan was to make some display stands similar to this tutorial, but using a coarsely-woven fabric instead of mesh for better visual contrast. I started with some pictures in frames from the local Goodwill. I removed the pictures from them and glued some shaky joints to shore them up. It was a nice sunny day and I'd just come home from brunch, so I decided to work outside in the back yard.

I wanted to mimic the faux-gold effect that some of the frames already had, but with purple, by painting a dark purple undercoat and then adding metallic purple highlights. I used the acrylic paint I had lying around from my mural-painting undergrad days. I like acrylic paint because it dries quickly, and in this case the fact that acrylic dries to a very dark color was desirable. As I got to work on the base coat, I noticed that the paint had a tendency to clump between the shapes on the frame, so I paid special attention to brushing those areas to avoid this.

While I was painting this undercoat, I thought a lot about purple. I realized that purple isn't just my favorite color--it's also a kind of metaphor or shorthand for my enthusiasm and excitement about things. It's why I'm so happy when I've recently redyed my hair and have random spots of purple on my arms. It's why I named this jewelry thing Purpleshiny--it's something I can always talk about with joy, and if there isn't that undercurrent of enthusiasm in what I'm doing, I'm Doing It Wrong. Lately, as I've been prepping for this show, I've felt a bit like my nearly-empty tube of purple acrylic paint--hoping that there's enough of me to go around, to make everything splendid. But there was enough purple paint for all of the frames, and I hope there's enough of my time, energy, and enthusiasm to get me ready for and through the show.

I also thought a bit about reuse and repurposing, which I do a lot of in my jewelry as well as in this project. Who am I to take watch parts and make them into some kind of earring? Who am I to take a frame someone else has already painted and paint over it? I don't know, but a part of me hopes that one day someone finds my repainted frames and says, "These will be perfect if I paint them green!"

Anyway, then I mixed a very shiny batch of paint for a highlight/topcoat--it was a mixture of purple paint, silver paint, iridescent white paint, and two kinds of interference powder--one metallic and one iridescent. I used a mostly-dry brush to apply it glancingly to the frames, so that the highlight only touched the raised areas. This is a lot like an effect I used for clouds in several paintings in my dorm. My mural-painting past seems to have prepared me well!

Then came the part where I attached fabric to the frames. This meant I got to attack the backs of the frames with a stapler. I didn't get any pictures of that part, but it was really fun. I haven't wielded a stapler in several years, and I'd forgotten how satisfying the kaCHUNK of the staple going into the wood is. Also, I now know to only use frames made from soft wood in the future. One of the four frames was made from some kind of hard wood that staples and nails couldn't go into, so I used glue and tape instead. Seems like it might be less reliable, but I think it'll hold.

I'm so excited to have these frames to display jewelry! I know my copper pieces usually look best on a light background, and I'm glad I figured out a way to incorporate awesome purple colors while still using a light-colored fabric for the background. I still need to figure out a way to prop the frames upright, but I'm sure I'll come up with something.