*conditions apply

*conditions apply

I really crack myself up sometimes.

Get these crafty characters at this:

You give love a bad name

Love Letters jewellery decorating one of the anthems of the 80s that I think I might have once rollerskated to. This one goes out to Dan and Poppilina.

You give Love a Bad Name - Bon Jovi

An angel's smile is what you sell
You promise me heaven, then put me through hell
Chains of love got a hold on me
When passion's a prison, you can't break free





You're a loaded gun
There's nowhere to run
No one can save me
The damage is done








Chorus:
Shot through the heart
And you're to blame
You give love a bad name
I play my part and you play your game
You give love a bad name
You give love a bad name



Paint your smile on your lips
Blood red nails on your fingertips
A school boys dream, you act so shy
Your very first kiss was your first kiss goodbye





You're a loaded gun
There's nowhere to run
No one can save me
The damage is done





Chorus:
Shot through the heart
And you're to blame
You give love a bad name
I play my part and you play your game
You give love a bad name
You give love a bad name

Back 2 Skool Suckers

Of the current 2 retail crazes I'm finding the back to school stationery festival far more enjoyable than the nationalistic flag frenzy of Straya Day/Survival Day, whaddeva you want to call it.

Could it be a touch of schadenfreude knowing all the little Dick and Doras are finishing their super fun holidays and going back to boring old school to learn multiplication tables and John Howard's new history curriculum? Nah. It is just that I like to celebrate stationery. Before wrecking it. Today I got this rather spiffy giant pencil shelving unit at the local thrift store. It just happens to match Texta velvet touch me pencil pins quite well. Colour me happy Mr Squiggle.

Why I Heart Librarians

You may not think it, but this necklace is the jewellery of choice for one sassy librarian I know. Nothing surprises me when it comes to librarians and their desire for personal adornment. With rockstar librarian Nancy Pearl in BrisVegas, (love the action doll), I thought it timely to discuss the topic. During a past life spent working in libraries and even growing up in library culture (father was a librarian) I have been able to study them and develop my own market research theories. You've basically got your 3 archetypes - I'll ignore the male variety as the population sample is too insignificant for analysis - Buffy's Giles is really all you need to know here.

1. Lifestyle Librarian. A passion for books, knowledge, databases, cataloguing, internet etc.
   
   Navy cardigans and sensible shoes are the unofficial uniform here. These come in 2 main categories:
   a) Conservative on the outside while groovy on the inside proving once more that you can't judge a book by its cover. These ones are politically and socially enlightened and may surprise you with their dance moves. They are a good market for brooches - on their navy cardigans and small neat earrings with strings of beads.
   b) Conservative on the outside, conservative on the inside - somewhat of a stereotype I'm afraid and definitely a minority group in the throes of extinction. These are the ones that perhaps should have gone to police academy but somehow wound up in library school. Noted for an overzealous approach to enforcement of library rules and lack of sense of humour, they have no use for unecessary adornment which only gets in the way when they have to tackle misbehaving library patrons.
   
   
2. Liberated Librarians. These are the stylish and/or geeky ones out to prove that being a librarian does not exclude one from excercising the personal expression of weirdness. Who knows what they do in their spare time but don't be fooled by the strange garb and hair colour- these ones really know their stuff and are the prime target for contemporary jewellery and designer/unique clothing. From afar they resemble flocks of brightly coloured parakeets chattering away and sharing information and style tips. Anything goes and they like to outdo their colleagues - something that the savvy jeweller can use to their advantage.
   
   
   
3. Lipstick Librarians. Avoid these women. You can normally hear the approach of their trashy stilettos (*clik*clak*clik*clak*) although they may engage stealth mode on carpeted surfaces. They are generally to be found in sections of the library called 'Corporate Services' and are characterised by an all consuming lust for power. If you do see one approach, the best course of action is to ward them off with dusty printed matter which acts like a form of kryptonite, weakening their powers. As potential jewellery clients, don't bother. These women have no class and are only looking for ways to conspicuously display their power and status.
   

Computers are Bad

Okay, time for geek week backlash. My previous posting was the RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury) bracelet made from computer keys and today I do NECKPAIN. Because computers are bad for you in so many ways! The Luddites knew what they were doing when they took hammers to the machines of the Industrial Revolution and now we must enact the final solution.

Here are some of the different ways that homo geekiens have managed their computer rage from a survey by University of Maryland where they research all the important stuff. Click here for full list.

• I name my computers, and I use their names pretty much only when I'm mad at them. When my old computer, Charles, use to be bad..I'd yell, but then I tried giving him hugs instead..

• I scream at my computer because I know that it hears me and is laughing at me.

• Pull the plug instead of going through shutdown or report this error to Microsoft.

• I tend to bang on the keyboard harder when I get frustrated but not to the point of breaking it. I don't curse at the computer but do say harsh words to it occasionally.

• I take frustration out by yelling foobar outloud as i don't want to damage expensive hardware. I also tell everyone around me how evil my computer/ the technology was.

• I've never hit a computer screen hard enough to break it, but this week I hit my car windshield and cracked it. Maybe I should find a road rage survey.

• I often show my PC the middle finger!

• I sometimes put my Hands around my monitor's "neck"

etc etc, very funny...University of Maryland seems to have an entire faculty devoted to the study of Computer Rage and you can visit this site to find safe and cathartic ways of venting like the recommended mouse torture pictured at left.

I have often come close to some of these behaviours whilst editing the jewellers and metalsmiths A5 booklet quarterly newsletter but never whilst blogging. Blogging is good. Nothing bad has happened to me while blogging...yet. Any rage against computers comes out of me in the way I meticulously take apart computer bits and reconstruct them into delicate pieces of jewellery.

Seriously but. They have improved a bit over the last 20 years. I remember back in the bad old days of the early 90s I sharehoused with a systems analyst who would return home from a 90 hour week sporting monitor burns all over his face and looking like Michael Gambon in The Singing Detective. We didn't have much sympathy for him though as he was earning more in a couple of hours than we earned in the whole week as underemployed artists!

But maybe we are getting more intolerant of computers. We should be more in control of negative emotion. My theory is the more disposed you are towards inflicting violence on a computer, the more likely you are to inflict it on a living creature. Like those studies on domestic violence survivors whose pets have also been at the receiving end of violence before and while the interhuman abuse got really bad. Anyway, food for thought. If you are going to enact violence or nasty words on anything, think of how it might effect those around you first. Have a laugh at yourself instead! And do it for the sheer joy of destruction, not out of hate!

Don't forget, Junk IT starts this friday!

Geek Week 7: Geek go bye bye

All this blogging has given me an overuse injury. It is only 8.05pm but I am sooo sleepy. Guten nacht meine kleine geekinder.

Geek week 5: Dungeon Master Blaster

Okay, I live with a Dungeon Master. It's out now. I don't have to call him DM or anything weird like that, to me he is just Wayne the Magnificent. And from what I hear, he runs a bloody good game though I have never been a part of Wayne's world in that respect.

He pulled together a bunch of gamers via the internet and every year they have their anniversary D&D game at the Marriott hotel. You can check out the website for their current game and a view into their world of Anderfarnoria.
One year he asked me to make amulets for each of the characters for the anniversary game. That is one kind of anniversary these nerds will never forget and everyone knows jewellery is always important for these commemorations. So I made these (selection pictured above) from pebbles collected on remote beaches in Aust and New Zealand with engraved symbols that related to each the characters. So here I am- Jeweller to the Nerds.

Geek week 4: Blessed be the geeks

After Miss Liana and Miss Windbag’s blogs yesterday about not being particularly geeky at all and being 80% geeky (respectively), I paused to reflect on the generous nature of the nerds that are around us. We all have an alpha nerd friend to help us out when we get in a fix. They are always super helpful and seem to love the challenge of solving tricky problems. No matter how nerdy you are, there is someone nerdier and they seem to want to share their knowledge and help you to learn. They are like a bunch of hippies and it reminds you that the human capacity for cooperation and sharing has played as large a role if not greater than the 'survival of the fittest' model that we are told is the fundamental evolutionary truth (and actually is in some art circles)! It is a hidden economy of gifting that never really gets recognised by economists and has had good things like the Linux open source systems that are spreading so much joy among microsoft haters. I hope the nerds know that they are appreciated by neo-luddites like me. For all that they do.

I said to Liana once that my alpha nerd partner and his nerdier friend were going to upgrade the computer that we share to add more storage capacity and that they had ambitions to make it into a super computer. Backups had to be done of my precious image files and it was a major disruption to my blogging/internet schedule. She said “God I HATE it when they do that!” It’s true, I wouldn’t mind how many gigglewhatsits my computer has. As long as I’m number one on a google search for ‘jewellery’ I couldn’t care less. And it is the geeks that hold the key to that.

Now I'm off to the beach for a coupla days to de-geek and watch whale watchers.

Geek week 3: Geek Gold Mine

Today I am giving you a sneak peek of some of the gorgeous GEEK CHIC must haves NOT made by Rebecca-the-Wrecker available at the upcoming Junk IT exhibition. And they are ALL so very green - in more ways than one.

It is interesting how they are all so green and green. Our graduate student at MoBWorkspace , Bibi Locke, has an environmental conscience and was asking me how to get green gold in Australia. Green gold is recycled gold from IT waste and other industrial applications as well as old jewellery. It is used in electronics because it has such wonderful working properties and in its pure form never tarnishes or corrodes in air. Shame on me, I didn't know much so did a bit of research. But it looks like you have to be careful about the source of any green gold that you might lay your hands on if you want it to be ETHICAL as well! I found an article on ABC online about the problem of E Waste. Here is an except:

"'Recycling centres' have sprung up in developing nations to cater for the exported waste. Electronic goods are reused or recycled in unregulated and unsafe conditions. In towns like Guiyu in China it is not uncommon to see open burning of plastics and wires and smelting of circuit boards to reclaim metals. Riverbank acid baths are used to extract gold. Lead-containing cathode ray tubes from monitors and television sets don't render much of marketable value and so are dumped. Toner cartridges are pulled apart manually, sending clouds of toner dust into the air. The workers, some of whom are children, generally work without facemasks or protective clothing. Guiyu's ground water is now so polluted that drinking water has to be trucked in from 30km away"

...AND IN AUSTRALIA according to the ABC, WE ARE LEADING THE WORLD AS USUAL!

"A few years ago the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA) started a mobile phone and battery recycling program. AMTA partnered with environment group Planet Ark to educate the Australian public about the program. Hundreds of thousands of mobile phones have been recycled, recovering gold, nickel, copper and plastics for other manufacturing and keeping the cadmium from the batteries out of landfill and therefore out of the water table. This program is now a role model for both mobile phone recycling programs overseas and for recycling programs for other types of electronic waste."

read entire article here

Gold has always had a bloody history. Even recently. Who knows if some of the gold in your wedding ring may have been stolen by Nazis from the people they persecuted in the death camps? Or torn carelessly from the earth in developing countries with devastating health and environmental impacts for the surrounding communities and underpaid workers?

This photo of the flooded jungle downstream from the Ok Tedi mine in PNG. Source: courtesy Mineral Policy Center. It comes from a World Resources Institute article on on one of the worst recent gold mining disasters close to home for Australia geographically and economically with the involvement of Australian mining company BHP.

An organisation promoting ethical gold to the US public and jewellers No Dirty Gold and is supported by influential Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG) They maintain that gold mining is one of the dirtiest industries on earth and have urged retailers to adopt a clean gold policy. It sounds like something I should follow up and let you know what I find out. Because to be honest, silver is gold's naughty little sister and I've gotta do some detective work to see where mine is coming from.

Anyway, enough of all the doom and gloom. If you want to avoid all that and support ethical local production, get along to Junk IT next week! I'm going to get there especially early for Danielle Wood's fabulous handbag so HANDS OFF everyone!

Geek Week 2: False idolls

After seeing Miss Liana's geek week posting showing her collection of Liana 'Kelly' dolls I started to wonder if it was really safe working with her in the studio. It's a bit weird. We haven't asked residents before to undergo psychological testing but now might be a good time to start.To try to normalise her fetish, here are a few of my favourite dolls. Because I'm really normal.

The 'Pretty in Plaid' Barbie was a present from my workmates when I quit fulltime hard labour at the library 7 years ago. But not before taking my employer to the Industrial Relations Commission for daring to move my desk (true!). In losing the case (due entirely to the outrageous political influence of the conservative party anti-worker legislation), I was left with no other option but to quit in pique and set up my jewellery studio, something I'd been avoiding since graduating college 6 years before.

I think my cybrary workmates got me a barbie because I so needed a few pointers in the personal grooming dept. As a child I never had a Barbie though secretly desired one. Thus I missed out on acquiring the skills so critical to the development of a successful female. My younger sister had campervan barbie, spa barbie, pool barbie, crystal barbie and Ken and all I had was some cheap barbie ripoff air hostess doll whose legs would not even bend backwards. My sister is now married with 3 children and I'm rebecca-the-wrecker.

As a direct result of barbie deprivation during the developmental stage of feminisation, I went through a mercifully brief stage of melting and cutting up barbies into jewellery and meathook sculptures during the latter half of a gold and silversmithing degree. While the results had none of the sophistication of an exquisite Margaux Lange design, this did enable me to avoid learning how to set faceted gemstones. Today I still don't know how to use makeup and I cut my own hair into a variety of scarecrow influenced styles. But Pretty in Plaid Barbie helps me to understand the concept at least. She stands on top of my bookcase and commits suicide everytime a train rattles past. I think the thought of public transport fills her with despair. And any children who visit and ask to play with Miss Pretty in Plaid are given short shrift indeed.

My Novas Infinite Doll (number 11) is one of Florence Forrest's wonderful creations and an essential for all radiation affected geeks. Novi sits next to my computer and soaks up electromagnetic radiation which it needs to survive. Sometimes Novi helps me sort through old keyboards to find stuff for my neo-luddite range. Like the Barbie, Novis are not really suitable for young children. A little baby who was visiting with his mother the other night mistook the electromagnetic radiation absorption beak for something that might dispense breast milk. Poor Novi! He is in trauma counselling.

Chic Geek Week 1

Welcome to geek week on Rebecca the Wrecker, Plastic Girl and Windbag and Thunder (and whoever else wants to join in!
I am starting off with my "I Robot" Necklace made from computer key and st silver- part of my new neo-luddite range.

Hair Control for Neo Luddites

At 'Junk IT' I'll be launching a revolutionary new approach to hair control:
The Neo-Luddite Hair Control System uses a blend of computer technology and old fashioned elastic to deliver a crafty solution to all of your head hair styling requirements.

Eliminating the need for hot rollers, permanent waves, various nasty chemical styling products, not to mention those endless trips to the hair stylist, this simple and affordable product empowers the wearer to take full coiffure control. Flexible and easy to use, available in the latest fashion colours, be sure to try the Neo-Luddite Hair Control System soon before everyone else does!

*Available PC or MAC format
**Available in single strand or double strand elastic for heavy hair days

The one that got away

Being the daughter of a fisherman, I am very familiar with the concept of 'the one that got away'. Yesterday I delivered my new Neo-Luddite range to Reverse Garbage for JUNK IT and returned home to discover that one had indeed got away. I found Alien Code brooch cowering terrified under the computer keyboard where I was entering its details into excel earlier in the day. It was perfectly camouflaged, tentacles a quivering. I explained to it that they are very nice people at Reverse Garbage and there's every chance that it would be going to a good home so there was no need to hide. With that, Alien Code squared it tentacles bravely and popped into my bag ready to embark on an exciting new life chapter.

Somewhere, over the rainbow

As it is Brisbane Pride Festival month, and we could not resist the "Show your true colours" festival logo, MoB Workspace are celebrating with a competition on our blog and with new jewels in MoBStore. Here is a peek at my "Somewhere, over the rainbow" range.

I was having so much fun with with the pretty rainbow colours that I felt bad about not using the black pencil that came in the set so made "The Happy Goth" necklace based on the Divine Comedy song with the chorus:

"Well her clothes are blacker than the blackest cloth
And her face is whiter than the snows of Hoth.
She wears Dr. Martens and a heavy cross,
But on the inside she's a happy goth. "

I don't know quite how this relates to the gay and lesbian Pride festival but I suppose it is all about showing your true colours!

MoBStore is open 10am - 5pm, 7 days a week so come on in and look at our fabulous display!

Cup Runneth Over

This blessed morning I woke up to this wonderful sight:

A car boot FULL of computer keyboards- 27 in total of many different creeds, young and old. I had to use the wheelbarrow, there were so many! Salvaged by Alpha Nerd/mini-skip diver, Stuart Skabo - thanks Stu! I love them all like they were my children. Kind of - they are the grist for my new 'Neo Luddite" range of work. The original Luddites took their hammers to the lace stocking manufacturing machines of the Industrial Revolution. Nothing makes wrecker blood boil more than technology. Here's how it goes:

The Neo-Luddites will be launched at Reverse Garbage, West End for Junk IT. Opening:
Fri, 21 July 2006 (6pm to 8pm)
Exhibition ends – Sat, 12 Aug.

Sneak peek: