Fire Mountain order, faux earrings

I will likely make another Fire Mountain Gems order in the next week or so -- there's some stuff I want before Newton Open Studios. I won't order unless I'm buying things at the 50+ items rate, and I have about 30 things I'd like now. So if anyone else would like to get something, let me know. If several people want things we can probably get to 50 items without much trouble.

One thing I noticed is that Fire Mountain now seems to have the spring-based faux pierced hoop earring that I've often worn with various costumes. If you want fake earrings, these things are awesome (though I can't speak specifically for the Fire Mountain ones -- I got mine at Claire's, I think?); they look real and will not come off. They can pinch if you leave them on for a long time, but not enough that it's stopped me from wearing them for the duration of a day or evening. The less-than-a-dollar price at the Fire Mountain 50-items rate is definitely cheaper than I've ever seen them anywhere else.

Craft Update: Aralis prayer holders

For those who don't know what I'm talking about: Aralis is a live action roleplaying game I play, which has an in-game religion with a pantheon of gods. At the event this past weekend a staff character and I (with a good deal of help from other people) set up an in-game art gallery that was open for business for a few hours Saturday night. Better than half a dozen players contributed art or crafted work they had done, much of which was available for purchase with in game money.

For my contribution to the gallery I made a number of 'prayer holders', ornaments decorated with colors, materials and symbols appropriate to one of the gods in the pantheon, with a split ring where a slip of paper with a prayer could be inserted. I also made a number of small hammered wire spiral tokens decorated with appropriate colors that could be pinned to clothing. Before the gallery opening, I asked (player character) priests of the appropriate god to perform a blessing over the prayer holder and the tokens, in their local temple or shrine, including writing a blessing on a piece of paper to be added to the prayer holder. Half the money from the sale of the prayer holder and/or tokens then went to the appropriate temple.

Here are all the prayer holders:



L-R: the Wavedancer; the Green Mother; the White Goddess; the Winter Storm; the Ironhand; Luna; Sol.

I made one more as a gift, with symbols and blessings of several gods on it:



My goals with all this were:

- to emphasize the existence of religion in the Aralis world in a non-system related way (think of how many religious references are an everyday part of most people's lives, rituals, and decorations -- even supposedly secular ones)
- to spur people to do some little religion/temple-related ceremonies in game
- to enable people to get a neat game-world-related crafted item without having to pay OOG money for it
- to make myself some IG money, because I was down to 9 copper, and I go through a fair bit of IG cash every session making alchemy to keep other characters from dying plus keeping myself fed.

I'd say I succeeded at all those things. I definitely enjoyed the three little ceremonies I was present for.

A big thanks to everyone who was involved with this project, whether blessing or buying prayer holders and tokens.

Also, an enormous thanks to everyone who helped enable or came to see the Aralis art gallery. I think it came off relatively well, and I hope it added something to people's game.