MOVING!!

Hello everyone!
As wonderful as this blog has been, it's time to move! We can now be found at melissadawnmakes.wordpress.com!

Thanks, and see you there!

Month of April Giveaway!

Yay giveaways! Who doesn't like free stuff? It starts on April 1, and will end on April 30. The winner gets a free pair of Simply Bold Infinity Twist Fake Gauges in the color of their choice, and if you refer the winner, you also get a pair of Twists in the color of your choice! So, share away, good luck, and may the odds be ever in your favor! (I had to...I really really like those books...)

The Link to the April Giveaway!

KiraKira Con 2012

KiraKira Con was fun! I got to meet some awesome, fun people, and one of my best friends in the world came with me to help run the table.
Here are some photos of the table! I'll be putting up more pictures of people later!

Look! An ongoing $20 gift certificate giveaway!

HOW TO WIN STUFF!


 *ahem* now that I have your attention, I'd like to announce the "Customer Appreciation Photo Drawing" where you can tag Lyssa's Stuff on a photo on Facebook of you in your Lyssa's Stuff jewelry, and be entered to win a $20 gift certificate for Lyssa's Stuff! Every time 20 photos have been tagged, I will draw a name from that pool using a random number generator. So, you always have a pretty good chance at winning!

**Rules**
The jewelry has to be from Lyssa's Stuff
You can't tag the same jewelry twice
You may tag each piece of purchased jewelry once (If you bought two pairs of earrings, you get two chances to win if you tag both photos!)


Like us on Facebook!

Sick days

For the past couple days, I've been valiantly fighting against a really nasty cold. And by "valiantly fighting," I mean sleeping. And drinking plenty of lemon juice and honey. Lemon juice to kill the stuff that's hurting my throat, and honey to make swallowing not painful; what's not to love?

In my ditzy sick mind, the honey makes a "bloop" noise when it goes in the lemon juice.

Now there's no more honey.

But that got me thinking (what else am I going to do when just getting up is exhausting?) about keeping bees. I really like bees. The fact that commercial bees, the kind that are shipped around the country to pollenate fields, are being fed nothing but sugar water on the trip is just sad! It's like feeding a baby Mountain Dew and expecting it to turn out healthy.

If I were to get a house in a neighborhood, I'd love to be able to keep bees. They'd be able to pollenate nearby plants, and produce honey. Now, honey isn't just helpful for sweetening things. Apparently, taking a tablespoon of local honey a day before allergy season can help reduce allergies! No, it's not proven, but I'd be willing to give it a shot!

Books Galore!

So in preparation for my new shop, I've been reading many, many books, and I wanted to share with you some great titles! Many of these are considered children's books, but I feel like they still have special meaning and significance when read at any level of maturity.

My list this far since January!
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins
Cinderella Henry W. Hewet's version
The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura
As You Like It by William Shakespeare (I know, it's a play, but still!)
Beauty and the Beast Unknown (but the beast is such a gentleman!)
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
The Little Prince by Antoine du Saint-Exupery

I've included links to all these books on Amazon so you can read about them! Also, don't be fooled; many of these books have movies. The books are NOT like the movies. I always encourage people to read the book, view the movie, and find what's good about each as an individual art form. :)

Right now, I'm making my way through Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (we've run aground in Torres Straits).

As intimated in my last post, I'm making jewelry designs (pendants and/or earrings) based on books. I don't have designs for all of them yet, but a good few! And I've decided I'm going to make smaller bookmark necklaces in white bronze, with the children's book themes.

Every time I switch books, I've been marveling at my bookshelf; it holds about fifty different worlds on it, and still stands strong!

Back From Break!

Hello everyone!
Hope you had a wonderful break, I did! My parents and boyfriend and I went up to Boston to see Peter Pan 360. OH my goodness did I love that performance! Not to mention that Peter Pan is one of my all time favorite books.

So, some New Year's News!
This year, I will be opening up a new shop, as well as getting a website up and running!

I am excited to announce the impending opening of my new store, Towee, this spring! Those of you who are familiar with Lyssa's Stuff (and those of you who are not) will find that Towee takes my jewelry collection in a new direction. Every piece in Towee is inspired by a literary quote. Some are quotes about books, but most are quotes from books. The quotes from books are those that have stuck in my head for years and have in some cases caused no end of contemplation.


The pendant pictured above provides an example of the sort of thing you can expect to find in Towee. The image on it is inspired from a passage in Peter Pan, one of my all time favorite books. Remember how Peter and Wendy exchange kisses (his an acorn, hers a thimble)?
I drew the image of the kisses, then hand carved a stamp to impress the design on PMC (precious metal clay). The back of the pendant has the chapter number where the image reference can be found, and my maker's mark. Once fired, the clay turns into fine silver to which I apply a patina for a weathered, well-loved look. I have many other pendants of the sort coming to the shop. I will also work with my clients on commissioned pieces, just as I have in the past.

By the way, note that this pendant style is not just any old pendant. If you are reading your favorite book and are called away, you may remove the pendant from its necklace and hook it onto your page as a book mark! I expect this will make it an inspired gift for your well-read friends, especially if accompanied by the book referred to.

Now you may wonder why on earth I have named the shop “Towee.” No, the inspiration was not the bird, nor the boat. The story comes from my earliest days of speaking, when I was not yet two years old. I was in the baby seat in the back of the car, my dad was driving. According to him, I said, “Daddy, towee.” He tried several times to guess what I was trying to say, but never succeeded. He quit, and we both traveled in silence a while until I said, “Daddy, li-bu-rary, book, towee.” He finally understood that I wanted him to tell me a story while we traveled along. That moment has become family lore, and “story” has been “towee” ever since.

Graduated!

Well, I am officially an alumnus of East Carolina University. YAY! It feels wonderful to not be a student anymore; no more papers, no more studying things I don't want to learn yet and not study the things that are just plain awesome (like astronomy! Astronomy is fantastic, but I couldn't take it! No time! grr...) no more waking up for 8 am classes that I know I'm not awake enough to do my best in, no more school food!

But here's the thing. As wonderful as it is, I now have this constant feeling of "I know I should be doing something. I can't have all this time, schedules don't work like that! I should wake up early to do something. What am I doing!" Tiresome!

My cousins also came up from Florida to surprise me for graduation, and my best friend drove in from Chapel Hill to have some fun time, so we had a wonderful weekend! There was a whole lot of geekery involved.

Anyway. i've had some really awesome commissions lately, and wanted to share a little!

Tada! Zelda earrings! The shield is about the size of my thumb. I'm pretty excited about how much little detail got in there! And I've realized that my exacto is probably getting a little dull; I had to do some major touch ups once I got the little shapes cut.

Monster plugs (0g)! Again teeny tiny cutting! And here's the best part:

THEY GLOW!!

Yep, that's the excitement of Lyssa this week. 

Translucent Canes and Feather Canes

Hi!
I've been playing around with Donna Kato's feather cane tutorial (click on the title for a link!), and came up with a few fun ones! Unfortunately, I got so cane-happy that I didn't think of what I could do with them after they were made... But I've been working on that!

These are going to go on bobby pins, I think. Nice little hair baubles, no?

These are some other canes I made; just a simple black one, and the red one from the last picture, and the one that looks white is actually glow in the dark. Yes, I love my shiny things!

And a bracelet I tried to make; I used a translucent feather cane and a translucent spiral cane on top of a ripple blade cut pastel stack.

P.S. Artistic rut is happening! I've been trying to find interesting pictures to stimulate me, but to no avail. Anyone want to share what inspires you?

Post Father's Day!

Yep. It's been quite a while...but I wanted to share some silly things from Father's Day. I'm lucky because my Dad is both a dad and a best friend. I was playing with some new canes at the table yesterday while we chatted and ate Kaluah brownies for breakfast, and I ended up reverting to the 3 year old me and started playing with making him look silly. When I was little, I would try braiding what little hair he had, but now I'm grown much more sophisticated! I made him polymer clay moustaches!

Happy post-Father's Day everyone! Hope you showed your dads some love!

Giveaway on pjmommy.com!

Hey everyone!
PJMommy.com is doing a giveaway of one of my Infinity Twists! It's pretty easy to enter, and I won't be putting this style up on Etsy until next month when the giveaway winner is announced. So, if you want them, please enter!

http://pjmommy.com/lyssas-stuff-jewelry-giveaway/

New Infinity Twists!

Ta-da! A new collection of Infinity Twists; Simply Bold. I love rainbows. ^_^ So, making Twists in the main rainbow colors was only a matter of time. They look really fun! I've been wearing different colors for different outfits, and mixing and matching too.

Neat, huh? They look really awesome all together. I'm thinking of making a listing for all of them as a set with a slight discount. We'll see how it goes.

Also, I'm checking pjmommy.com a lot because they're doing a review and giveaway of one of my Twists! It's a completely new one that isn't available in my shop yet, and won't be until the giveaway is complete. But here's a preview!

They fade from reddish-bronze to gold, and have little black and white pinstripes. Man, is it hard to get the stripes to stay in tact on a Twist!

Spring Break!

Oh thank goodness for spring break. I've really been needing this. Dad's new apartment is looking pretty awesome, and I'm finally able to sleep in with no fear of missing class. Yes, I've been procrastinating on the school work that's due when I get back, but seriously. It's break time.

Dad and I made brownies night before last, so we've been cutting into it pretty much every meal. Brownies for breakfast with mangos and cereal and coffee, brownies for lunch, brownies for dinner with chicken pot pie! Om nom nom nom nom. We sat last night for a couple hours just listening to Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain. What an awesome piece!  I love break.

New News!

So this last couple weeks have been just a little bit crazy; I drove a couple hours away every weekend to help my dad move into his new apartment, and tried to study for midterms. Luckily, my art teacher realized that the due date for our project was right smack in the middle of everyone's tests, so she postponed the deadline til after spring break. NICE.

It's a dye class, and we've been doing different shibori techniques since the beginning of the semester. The theme she gave us was resistance. These are a couple of my samples. Most of them start out as traditional pole wrapped shibori, but a few of them have folds or stitching. All of them are rainbow dyed with acid dye. I love how clear things are in the acid dye!

I'm a multicultural kid; my mom is a Filipina who went to a Catholic all girls school in the Philippines until college, and my dad is a mixed white American. There are things many things that I learned that agree with both cultures, but what happens when they disagree? I've been having to pick and chose what I want to take with me, and lately that's been getting harder. Dating protocols are very different from my mom's world and my dad's world, the role parents play in your adult life is another difference.

BeadsofLight13

Hello everyone! I'm still in the middle of a very hectic family/school time, but I just had to share with you a lovely new store on Etsy!

Chelsea's shop, BeadsofLight13 has some really pretty beaded works. Swarovski beads, lampwork beads, pearls, stones, glass, you name it. (No surprise she'd love to see Venice because of the glass! Great reason to go, by the way. They have neat little glass blowing studios tucked away at the tops of shops.)

This is a picture of a gorgeous bracelet I traded for! Did I mention how accommodating she is? 

Look at the wonderful glass bits in there! They're so pretty with the pearls. I can't resist shiny! I have no clue how she finds time to do all these beautiful pieces with the number of pets vying for her attention. Chelsea's got a german shepherd and three cats! One of whom is preggers too. I can hardly get stuff done with the amount of effort it takes to keep just ONE cat out of my room! She must be a secret animal whisperer. That's the only explanation!

But with all those pets, she's a girl after my own heart; she likes birds! I've been considering getting one, but it really has to wait until after I graduate and we get a place big enough to keep the bird away from the dog. Or else there'll just be a dog. It would be so cute if Chelsea got a parrot though! It would probably learn all her favorite country songs!

But really. Check out her shop! Because the more people look, the more she can experiment with learning some techniques she's been craving to play with. Like casting rings and doing sculptural pieces! Don't you want to see those?

^_^

Mellow...

School started on Friday, but tomorrow is the real start of my crazy semester! Bring it! >_< Sort of. I'm so mellow today. I guess that's what listening to Sigur Ros does to a person! I'm absolutely in love with "Kafari." It reminds me of the little water drops that fall in puddles after it stops raining; arhythmic, light, and almost nostalgic.

I finished making a really fun commission! This girl wanted me to do the TRON identity discs as earrings. At first, it was hard getting the shape of them right, but with a little help from a Chick-fil-A straw, they turned out awesome.

I also got to do a lot of research on types of findings, and it turns out there's a difference between gold-filled and gold plated. Filled has 50-100% more gold than plated does, so it's got a long, hypoallergenic life, but the cost is significantly less than pure gold studs. Handy info!

Spice!

No sugar, just spice! I love the colors of sunset, so I was playing around with my skinner blends and made a rich yellow/red/purple sunset sheet. But when I made it into Infinity Twists, poof. My gorgeous sunset was now some kind of ornamental pepper! I think it turned out pretty neat anyway.

The funny thing is, I can't eat anything even remotely spicy. Something about pepper, cayenne, or anything else spicy makes my tongue swell up, among other really unpleasant things with my gums. No idea why either! It makes me really wary of Mexican restaurants. I can't avoid them though! There's a place within walking distance of my school and all the other costumers love it. So, whenever we have a costume shop lunch or dinner, it's Chico's. Delicious, but dangerous.

Finally, an update!

Hi again everyone!
Now that I have my life back, (it's funny how one show can consume your entire life and leave you with nothing but a musical on repeat in your head...) I can go back to blogging!

Etsy's been doing great this holiday season; the stats on sales and views are fantastic! 2 million + items sold! I've done a few custom orders in the past couple months, and it's been so fun. The people have been great to work with, and it's so nice how they took the time to post feedback and even convo me to tell me they liked the piece!

Also, the biggest news EVER! My parents bought me a Nikon CoolPix P100 as an early Christmas gift! It has a gorgeous 26x zoom that I drool over constantly, and wow. My pictures are getting to be pretty neat. I love Christmas!

Check these out:

^_^

Dragon*con and Costumes!

Dragon*Con was a BLAST! Last time I went was back in 2007, and BOY has it grown since then. Instead of the three host hotels, there are now 5. We went to some wonderful panels, including one about the physics of the Whedonverse (including Firefly!) and an interview with the Tams. (Two of the actors from Firefly) Also, we went to a stage combat panel and a costume contest panel for The Wheel of Time, and I went to a polymer clay panel. TONS of good information!

I didn't get a lot of my own pictures since my camera decided that it would be more fun to watch me squirm because I can't get a shot of that really awesome costume that just walked by. But here are a few! My boyfriend's camera worked like a dream.

At one of the panels, we ran into some more Firefly cosplayers! And they had everyone (Pre Persophone Pickups...yay alliteration!) except Mal and Inara. (Wash was at another panel and joined in after this) So Elliot and I filled in the gaps!

I made my entire costume, and Elliot's jacket, although that's pretty hidden.

I found Severus Snape in a coffee shop! He even had the scowl down pat. That's Elliot in the background as Captain Hammer. We made his shirt and my groupie t-shirt.

Penny found us! She was so pretty!

That's all for now! ^_^

School!

School time Everyone! I finally got myself moved back to school and settled in. Unfortunately, I've realized I don't have the wonderful workspace I had over the summer. So! This weekend I figured out how to get my room in working order. Also, I've been working on a few things. A friend of a friend contacted me on Facebook saying I should make sushi plugs. They were a blast to make! And the only gamer plugs I could find were resin. So I'm making a few more styles to see how they go!

Paupu fruits from Kingdom Hearts. Which is one of my favorite games in the whooooole world.

Umbrella Corp!