How much should you charge for your painted coin flips?
Depends. One measure is the value of your painting. The other main factor is the actual cost of the coin you’ve inserted in the flip — not what you originally paid, but today’s market for that coin in that grade.
Categorically, “pretty okay” coins are going to measure up more or less like this:
All jewelry — in fact, ALL engineered structures — have one thing in common; they are each and every one, no matter how complex or simple, is made up of a collection of elements.
Okay, so what the heck is an element?
It is a single repeatable item — in the case of Jewels of Ancient Lands jewelry, this consists of a bead or a small grouping or series of beads strung onto a copper, silver or 18k gold wire in the following manner:
Okay, now you can wire another element onto that one, and so forth, until you’ve made a necklace, bracelet, earrings or pendant.
This is a set of basic stuff you really need to know if you plan to make and sell jewelry at home. Take a closer look at the photo above, and note that it’s all made from wire and beads — no solder, no casting.
Solder-free jewelry is impossible, unless it’s cast, and both are things I’d rather not do, especially for money, so I developed my line of wire-made jewelry, including wire-linked necklaces and bracelets, and wire-wrapped meteorites and other gemstones.
Gemstones are not typically drilled large enough to allow wire to pass through them, so I have to find gemstone suppliers who are willing and able to drill my stones just a wee bit wider, enough to accommodate a .16 gauge copper, silver or 18k gold wire.
By the way, jewelry-grade wire is already polished, so all it needs is a gentle rub, unless you’ve butchered the metal beyond simple polishing.
Beads as Money — Beads were the first money. Until then, about 50,000 B.C., any exchange was strictly in livestock, food, skins, weapons — some sort of trade or barter. The hole in a bead made it easy to carry on a string or leather thong, so you didn’t have to bury it near your home under the third fencepost as usual. Certain rare beads had definite values, such as seashells in an inland community with no seaport or ocean access. Common early “money” beads were made of bone, shell, wood, and some larger seeds or seed-pods. In some parts of the world, beads are still money, and some beads can bring many thousands of dollars, and even millions of dollars, at public auctions. Continue reading
What is a gemstone? A PRECIOUS GEMSTONE can be described more or less accurately as a mineral that is accepted as a gemstone for jewelry purposes, such as a cut & polished ruby, emerald, sapphire or diamond.
What makes them different from the lesser varieties of SEMI-PRECIOUS gemstones is their hardness.
The semi-precious gemstones are the ones we’ll be mostly considering for the purposes of making handcrafted copper and sterling silver pieces, and we’ll go into them in detail in just a few moments, but first, let’s ask ourselves why we want to have these gemstones on our body adornment in the first place, other than to attract attention or create allure.
Metaphysical and Healing Properties of gemstones has long been known and appreciated, dating back at least 50,000 years of human history. The healing power of gemstones was known and understood by the ancient technologically advanced and stone-age cultures, and through millenia of observation, gemstones have been associated with very specific healing ASSIST attributes. Continue reading
Here are a bunch of personal notes expanded from a short stack of Post-It notes by my coin-searching pad. I hope you can use this information to gain a better understanding of the technique and liberating technology of Soul-Searching and Sweep-Searching under the 3 Aspects of Coinology which together form the triple-faced Goddess of Coinology, Solaria.
If, on the other hand, you have a favorite god-form, don’t hesitate to assume it for your searches. So, with a lot more further ado than you might like to see, here are the aforesaid previously mentioned “personal notes”, which are, as I’ve already indicated, expanded from much shorter notes written on sticky note paper and plastered by the side of my coin search table and adequate Soft-White lighting.
The biggest hurdle in coin-searching is knowing exactly what you’re looking for, and that really is hindered by studying photos. They simply don’t convey the “feel” of the coin, and once you’ve had an example of that particular error coin in your hand, you’ll not likely forget it, and you can and will SEE the error, thus giving yourself the confidence needed that you WILL RECOGNIZE that coin when it comes up in a search. No doubt about it. Continue reading
If they’re cheap enough, earrings can be bought at the rate of a pair a day, and some folks will do exactly that — buy a pair a day or more. With Gender Fluidity becoming all the rage among youngsters, there’s a good chance that everyone will have piercings galore, which indicates that there will be more than enough piercings on the average teenage body to accommodate dozens of earrings at a time, so don’t stop at the ears!
With my Teeny Copper and Teeny Brass Earring Kits, you can make thousands of earrings an hour, and they’re so cheap, quick and easy to make! Okay, maybe not THOUSANDS of earrings an hour, but certainly dozens.
Actually, the earrings will cost on the average of less than a dollar to make, and for another half a buck, you can successfully and wonderfully package them for easy retail sales.
Yes, I said “easy sale”, because there’s nothing easier than selling someone their own name or their Zodiac sign or their pet’s name etched in copper or brass, and that’s just the NAME variety of earrings or medallions — but there are so many more things you can do with this amazing medium, beyond just names and Zodiac signs.
You see, a craft circle is a CRAFT circle, meaning that the folks are engaged in learning how to make a special and very unusual handmade item in a Paleo way. Continue reading
When we exhibited the museum installation “Ancient Faces” at the JAL — Jewels of Ancient Lands — show in Rancho Cordova, it took over the better part of half an acre of commercial space, and drew a crowd in the thousands, but where did they all end up? You’re right, the gift shop, and in the gift shop, this is what they’d see and buy.
Famous Faces Fascinate Folks Ferociously. Not just local fame, like Elvis and the Beatles, but everlasting fame, as in Goddess faces. The Goddess Solaria is the Mother Goddess of Mother Goddesses.
She can be any God, Goddess, Buddha or Ascended Master you care to name her. The face above has, literally, billions upon billions of variations, most of them slight, most variations would not readily be discernible by the unpracticed eye. Continue reading
Read it and weep — we’re going to wade through a bit of negative news first, but I assure you that there’s GOOD NEWS at the end of the trail — here is a list of the top 14 eBay searchwords for ART, listed in the order of their relative importance, most-popular searchword in the first place, least popular searchword in last place, thus:
In the course of making several dozen Cornflower Mandalas yesterday, I happened upon a disk made of the embossing metal I’ve been using for decades, now, and duly made a Cornfield Mandala upon it and packed it into a dollar-sized cardboard “flip” coin holder, so-called because to look at the other side of a coin, you flip the flip over with an easy practiced move.
Boy, the key word there is surely “practiced”, and “practiced moves” is what metal embossing and coin-carving is all about, and that goes double for gem-setting and ring-making and painting and sculpting and video gaming and hopscotch and just about anything else you endeavor to do well.
The “right moves” is a Big Number in Buddhism, meaning that it’s important.
“Right Action” means making the right moves at the right time in the right place with the right intention, nice and smooth, making no sudden moves, no ripples in the Firmament or Force.
In short, “Right Action” is grace and movement in relating to the universe and other Beings, and is and was a big subject with Picasso, Matisse, Dali and Stravinski. Continue reading
I’ve given my sources for my metal embossing projects, so that you can bring your prices down, down, down, to the level where there’s some profit in it and it’s worth your while to devote time, energy and talent to the thing.
But what if you DON’T intend to quit the day job and sell your embossed metal artwork to thousands of satisfied customers??? What if you don’t intend to order and await shipments of industrial foil, huge cartons of coin-flips and enormous quantities of sales tags? For you, there is a VERY good answer.
I make kits that are attuned to specific projects. You get all the materials and supplies you need to make 21 finished disks mounted in “flip” coin-frames for sale — that’s one to wear in a bezel or carry as a pocket-pal or purse-pal in an acrylic capsule, if you decide to use those items.
ALL MY DESIGNS COME IN ONLY ONE SIZE, made especially for the dollar-sized disk & bezel. You can re-size them as you wish. You will do better by just sort of roughly and generally copying the lines rather than trying to trace them, but some folks won’t have it any other way, so for them, you’ll have to shrink the thing down on photoshop and print it out on a TRANSFER paper, I suppose.
If you work this system rightly, you’ll develop your own “iconographics” and get them into the metal form. The whole point here is to utilize “reductionism” in order to simplify the form, as Cangialosi would have said it. You can also understand the concept in the following Matisse-ian way:
“EXPRESS THE SUBJECT WITH THE FEWEST POSSIBLE LINES.” Continue reading