AlternaCon 2015 was awesome!

AlternaCon received overwhelmingly positive feedback this weekend, especially from some seasoned vendors who said it was the best first-year convention they had attended. Woot! While none of the vendors except the publishers did particularly well financially, it was very worthwhile. My booth, Madam Raveena's Curio and Tea Room, was definitely a success as a refuge from the crowd, and I had numerous people returning for games of chess and mancala, and an epic game of Star Wars Trivial Pursuit broke out at one point. I put a lot of effort into the atmosphere of my booth, and it must have showed because it got a mention in the local newspaper. My water spirit bowl delighted many passers by, and I believe my movie prop/memorabilia display was the largest collection there. Brit, the event coordinator and an old friend from middle school, had picked the perfect girl to help me out. Her name is Tara Beckman, and she brought so much of just the right kind of energy with her sword dancing skills, musicianship, and and friendly demeanor. My half brother Derek and his girlfriend Tiffany were also a great help. Derek is an excellent chess player, and I think my board got more play in 3 days than in all the years I've owned it. We played a parlor LARP (Live action role playing) game with a steampunk theme, which was a lot of fun once it got rolling. In addition to my booth, I was on the panel for teaching Steampunk 101. While I wish I had been better prepared for a public speaking engagement than I was (especially since one of the other panel members had made such nice presentation boards), it seemed to go well. I'm definitely excited for next year's AlternaCon, and can guarantee that my booth will be even better- several of my projects were only half-finished by opening day, and others were ready-to-go, but never got pulled out because the timing didn't seem right. Still, there was enough going on in my booth at any given moment to make people happy, which made me happy, too!

Analysis of Inspiration for Madam Raveena's

Above, corset training for the event, Below, one on my bracelets for sale at Madam Raveena's.

My involvement with the Las Vegas Renaissance
 Faire taught me a lot about audience reception and interest at conventions, which is giving me a lot of guidance for Madam Raveena's. The Greenwood Revelers, my guild, was the biggest draw to the faire. The SCA's local branch was involved too, another group I have a history with so I'll use them for comparison.

The SCA is awesome for what it does, but it's not designed to entertain mundane audiences. The fighting is cool, but it's more of a sport than a show. The weapons and armor are for safety rather than authenticity. The audience will never know you hand spun your own yarn and dyed it with beet juice to knit that shawl. Totally cool, but not entertainment.

The Greenwood Revelers, however, is a guild made up of stagehands, entertainers, scenic artists, costume makers, etc. Our guild's focus is very much on the audience's experience, and in this case we were dealing with walkby traffic/ shoppers, but people who were looking for a carnival/ fantasy atmosphere. There's a set, props, costumes, characters and storylines that can be understood within seconds, episodic skits, audience interaction, etc. There always seemed room for improvement to me, but we were successful enough to pass the Vegas test, and that's very telling.

Anyone who's been to Vegas has visited at least one casino, and has seen that despite the pandemonium all around, the restaurants overlooking the game floors manage to create an atmosphere of their own, a world within a world. The effect mostly relies on scenic art and lighting and such, but it's effective enough to draw in tourists from all over the world.

 Once you have the audience's attention and imagination, they want to go further down the rabbit hole. Jeff McBride's Wonderground does an awesome job of bringing the audience into a world of magic and opening them to awe and wonder- two of the best emotions a performer, or spiritual leader, can evoke. It's all just a modern bear skin dance anyway, the tools of the Shaman...

And while the Fire Circle is always an influence on my life, AlternaCon is not an ideal place to attempt recreating that ritual. But I've learned other lessons that translate perfectly. Mountain Moon Circle liked to set up these installations that were dramatic interactions with spirit guides and such. They were awesome, but the context was wrong, I think. I had a hard time suspending my disbelief enough for full effectiveness because I was surrounded by very real spiritual energy of the fire and the acting seemed a comparative farce. But at an event focused on fantasy, throwing in a little unexpected real magic goes a long way.

 I was also inspired by the teahouse that has become such a fire circle staple in Vegas. It's a place to retreat temporarily, to recharge while staying engaged. Fred always keeps a collection of fun objects to interact with and start conversations.

Drawing from these sources and more, I'm creating Madam Raveena's Curio and Tea Room. AlternaCon is a convention featuring comics, sci-fi, video games, RPGs, etc, so I decided to focus on my steampunk specialty for the event. To my luck, steampunk exploded in popularity in town since I made that choice. I had a vendor booth, but Brit (the even organizer) and I had been talking about a steampunk tea party off site. Since that didn't work out, I incorporated the party into my booth. Brit has been awesome, and gave me extra space and help.

 My space is 28'x14', and Brit has a 10'x10' pop-up canopy for me. I have decor to spruce it up, and it will house a tea counter and business space for me. There will be a nice backdrop with some bookcases, where I will have various displays, including my jewelry and such for sale, and a couple not-for-sale collections, plus some interactive exhibits. The space not covered by the canopy will also have tables and seating and a small stage area.

 Part of the goal is to be a LARP zone, and encourage others to play along. The premise is that my shop exists at an interdimentional crossroads, where it is frequented by many strange travellers. It occasionally manifests in different locations on Earth, but maintains doorways to other realms. Madam Raveena is a 19th century Spiritualist (or seems to be) with many secrets, and it is rumored she was once one of the Doctor's many companions. She tells fortunes and occasionally performs magic or music, but is mostly intended to be the archetypal magical guide who starts the Hero on their Journey.

Overall it's pretty simple, and while I'd like to make improvements but am restricted by finances, I think it will be successful. And I'm not gauging success by money, but by audience reception. Or by future opportunities to do what I love (and not break the bank...).

 You can still donate to my Indiegogo fundraiser.
 Thanks.

Building Madam Raveena's: Where I Stand 5/29/15

I'm about halfway through my Indegogo campaign, and so far I've collected $100 from anonymous donors. Yay! I'm getting some inexpensive wooden shelving units and building plywood walls between them, so my backdrop is covered! It goes a long way in creating the atmosphere, which is a huge first step. Plus it gives me space to display the curios-  including  my jewelry, artworks, and such. Other displays include screen-used monster teeth from a couple films, worn by Snoop Dogg and Tony Todd and made by Rufus Hearn, CLONED Replicas' Dexter collection, and a corset worn by opera singer Marie Halton c. 1910. There will also be interactive exhibits, like my water fountain bowl (rub the bars to build energy and make a fountain spray from the bowl), alabaster chess set and other games, jasmine tea, fortune telling, and a small stage for parlor performance arts. AlternaCon is supplying tables and chairs, and I have just enough decor to dress the scene effectively.  There are definitely things I would love to add or upgrade if I get additional funding, but I think I've put together an impressive space for so little budget. Donate here.

I've made an effort to engage all the senses and provide opportunities to Live Action Role Play within the setting. For my own character Madam Raveena, I am preparing to tell fortunes, rehearsing magic tricks, corset training my waist, and improving my vaguely-Russian accent. The way steampunk has become popular in Billings, I expect there are many people just waiting to be sucked into the fantasy.

At least, I hope people enjoy it. One way or another, I'm committed, so I'm giving it everything I've got.

Allons-y!

Madam Raveena's Curio and Tea Room: A Steampunk LARP Experience

For me, the best part of going to a festival, theme park, or convention is being immersed in an experience other than mundane daily life, especially when efforts are made to take the audience on an adventure. At AlternaCon in Billings this summer, I want to transport people into a steampunk fantasy.

Welcome to Madam Raveena's Curio and Tea Room, an emporium of wondrous items and entertainment. Whether you're seeking your fortune and live performance art or a game of chess and a cup of tea, Madam Raveena's is an ideal place for your airship crew to take shore leave and meet other adventurers. Family friendly by day, adults only after hours.

For my friends in Vegas, you'll recognize several sources of inspiration- imagine if Rattlesnake Fred hosted tea in Jeff McBride's library, with a Wonderground atmosphere. This will be an installation at a comic convention (the region's first), and I know the steampunk theme will go over well (it just exploded in popularity in Billings, and I have the benefit of several years in the subculture, win!), but I really hope the experience stirs the inner Hero's Journey for those who seek it.

 My character, Madam Raveena, has been a lot of fun to create. She's a 19th century Spiritualist (like Houdini used to debunk), which gives me some great creative licence. I'm finally getting to play with ideas I came up with as a teen working as a tour guide in a historic mansion. I always thought it would be cool to do a Spiritualist style séance show as a fundraiser for the mansion, but I have always been afraid that it's a touchy subject, dancing on the edge of deeply held belief, frequently involving fakery, and historically people were taken advantage of. I'm hoping the steampunk atmosphere helps to attenuate that side of it.

 The curio portion will have my jewelry, art, and accessories for sale, and some displays of screen used items from films, replica props, and memorabilia collections. In the future I'd love to take it a little more P.T. Barnum, with a modern twist. My grandmother will never let me borrow it, but I can't help imagining the old player piano being a perfect addition to the tea room- an antique piano that plays itself evokes both the steampunk in it's obsolete mechanical wonder, while the self-moving keys suggest ghostly players attending the spiritualist. But it's labeled "Wishful Thinking" in my notes. A lot of my ideas are based on financial availability and may not be possible this year, like building an airship set for LARPing and photo shoots, or a spectral scrying glass.

My hometown is extremely isolated, with a population of 100,000 it's roughly 500 miles away from a larger city in any direction, meaning it is the shopping and cultural center for many who have never seen a real metropolis. And it's very mundane there. Good entertainment is rare, so the audience is world-reknown for how much it wants to enjoy every show. When I toured with the Raft, Billings was easily our best show. Every single person on the dance floor except the bartender, who was rocking it without leaving his station. So I hope I can do this right, because Billings deserves the mojo.

This is a dream come true for me! Thanks so much to Britt for setting me up with the space and letting me fly with my creativity. Thanks to Jeff McBride for all the lessons only you could teach.

 I'm committed to the project at this point, and it's coming out of my pocket. I've set up an Indie-gogo fundraiser to help me out. Please donate if you can! Even $5 or $10 makes a huge difference. And Billings people, I'm also accepting donations of furniture and decor that could pass as Victorian (or is nondescript), especially bookshelves, tables, and chairs. Also, I am looking for small-scale acts to show in the Tea Room. AlternaCon is July 10-12 at the Shrine Auditorium. I'm so excited! Donate Here

Raven Digitalis's talismanic necklace

This is an intense piece, a talisman that I had intended for a young pagan priest. I wanted to make a necklace that would enhance those qualities that make a good priest: magick power, emotional wisdom, intuition, clarity, protection, healing, and leadership were some of those factors.

I used labradorite, Picasso marble, peridot, onyx and a greenish yellow stone that was unknown to me at the time. It's a variety of serpentine, now one of my favorite power stones, that contains minute quartz crystals and flecks of black magnetite (lodestone).

I chose the pendant because I had been told it was the "Hand of God" and to me represented both service to the Divine and magick power.

 This talisman really took on a life of its own, and felt more powerful when I finished it than I expected. I stared at it for a while, taking in its energy-specific nature, and realized that this was a piece that most people in the Craft wouldn't be ready for. I knew some priests who could handle it, but this necklace was clearly not for any of them. I almost took it apart to tone it down, but I meditated on it, and the name came to me: Raven Digitalis.

That caught me off guard. We have mutual real-life friends and were networked on Myspace and Facebook (funny thing- he sent me a Myspace request, and I saw his book GothCraft on shelves at Barnes and Noble a day or two later, not realizing the connection until I noticed the author's photo and thought it seemed extremely familiar), but we had never met. It was a strange thing to have to explain, but being a fellow practitioner he didn't think it as weird as some people would. And he gave me the world's best testimony:

"OH. MY. GOD. I just got the necklace and am wearing it now. You weren't kidding; this is a powerful piece of work! I can't believe how "made for me" it is -- I don't usually feel so attached or drawn to pieces ... this is something special that has a particularly potent energy I haven't quite grasped yet. What a gem. I will treasure this for life;  thank you again!!!"

My passion for Steampunk Jewelry

I first got into making Steampunk jewelry as a casual admirer of the subculture, but annoyed by the lack of creativity I was seeing in the realm of jewelry. Here were these amazing costumes and props, but people were stringing a gear on a chain and calling it a necklace. "I can do better than that!" I thought, but didn't persue it immediately.

In a direct departure from my previous work with gemstone beads, I started experimenting with found-object pieces. I had accumulated a lot of components and broken chains that I wasn't comfortable using in talismans because I wasn't yet familiar with the energetic qualities of metals.

 And then I found a book called Steampunk Style Jewelry. I decided to go for it. While the book showed a big step forward from a gear-on-a-chain, and some real talent like Catherinette Rings, I had ideas that hadn't been touched on.

A lot of my inspiration comes from the Moss Mansion Museum in Billings, where I worked as a tour guide from age 14 to 21. I had a lot of time to study the various facets of Victorian-era styles, culture, and technology up close. I strive to replicate the kind of richness and detail that made me fall in love with the era.

 My work is still evolving as I learn new techniques and processes. It's possibly the most creative art form I've ever worked in, combining jewelry arts with a science fiction ingenuity and Victorian whimsy, which may be why it's one of my favorite pastimes.

 Every jewelry piece or prop I make is One-of-a-Kind. Occasionally I will be inspired to make similar pieces, but none are identical. This blog is intended to collect the stories behind some of my art pieces.

Making Talismanic Jewelry

Much of the jewelry I make is designed around an intention, an energy I wish to call forth, or a mythological concept. Sometimes I will pick up a particular gemstone and immediately be inspired, and it may "tell" me what stones it wishes to be paired with to achieve a particular energetic nuance or synergy. Other times a pendant will tell the story, and I find the right stones to build its spell. I've stored half-designed pieces for months before, waiting for all the right p to come together. And sometimes I have all the pieces, but the timing isn't right, so I wait until the appropriate mood or astrological timing.

Gemstones have been attributed with magic powers since antiquity, such as amethyst bringing peace and rose quartz drawing love. There are a number of resources on the subject. I have worked with stones long enough to have an intuitive understanding of gemstones' energies, but I still like to hear other opinions, especially since I often have a hard time putting it into words. Individual stones' properties will vary within a variety, due to mineral inclusions from different mines, or color. And quality has an effect on how much energy the stone produces.


When stones are combined, they have a power greater than the sum of their parts. This is called gestalt. Generally, similar energies between different types of stones are amplified and dissimilar energies fade to the background. The whole talisman takes on a single, intense, complex energy matrix rather than working as a bunch of little energy chunks. Incantations and other ritual acts performed while making the talisman are woven energetically into the energy matrix. They can also build up "psychic dust," so cleanse occasionally with a smudge wand or your favorite method.

I cannot guarantee that you will see obvious results. But don't be surprised if results are more intense than expected. Effectiveness increases with frequency of wear. Breaking of any magickal item releases the energy in a potent burst. I have seen remarkably synchronous moments when a talisman chose to unexpectedly release that could not have been planned better. (I stand behind my work if this ever happens. Please collect the parts as best as possible.)

 Even the pattern techniques are designed to enhance the magic. I usually create palindromes within palindromes. It's sacred geometry in 1-dimension.

 Even if you don't go for all the metaphysical stuff, my talismans are all one-of-a-kind (ooak) and use stones that are likely to appreciate in value. They have stories that cannot be told in the space of a price tag, so I created this blog to collect some of those tales.