Blog - Page 4 of 11 - D&O Celtic Jewelry

Posted on November 24, 2015November 15, 2016 by Dan

Meaning of the Pentagram Symbol

UPDATE 8/25/2016: I have corrected an error in this post. I was careless in saying that the Golden Ratio, Phi, came from the Fibonacci Series. The Golden Ratio is the solution to the equation (a+b)/b = a/b = Phi. The Fibonacci series is one series of numbers that converges on Phi. So they are two unrelated concepts that happen to converge on the same number. I regret the error.

I also added a caveat regarding confirmation bias to the section about how Phi is found in art and nature. Some of these claims are in dispute, but I still present them anyway as food for thought. I personally find some of them quite interesting, if nothing else.

Here is the original post from 11/24/2015 with the corrections:

I was recently asked to design a Pentagram pendant from someone who found me through my Shapeways shop. I have of course seen the Pentagram many times. I was aware that the Pentagram was often used as a symbol by the occult and Satanists. So I deliberately avoided doing any designs of it or even related to it before now. It’s really unfortunate that such groups have decided to use it (although they normally use one that is upside down, not right-side up). Regardless, I was very pleased to learn the relationship of the Pentragram to the Golden Ratio, which is seen throughout nature and in many works of art. Let’s take back this amazing symbol and use it for better purposes.

What is the Golden Ratio?

First of all, what is the Golden Ratio? The Golden Ratio is derived from solving the equation (a+b)/a = a/b. If you set the ratio a/b = Phi, the you get the equation 1 + (1/Phi) = Phi. When you solve this, you get Phi = (1 + √5)/2, which is 1.61803… Phi is another irrational number like Pi that goes on forever without a pattern.

The Fibonacci Series in mathematics also converges to Phi. It’s a remarkable coincidence that the two happen to converge on the same number even though they are not directly related. The Fibonacci series starts with either 0, 1 or 1, 1. The next number in the series is the sum of the previous two. So the first numbers in the series are:

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233…

You can see 0+1=1 and 1+1=2 and 1+2=3 and 2+3=5 all the way to 89+144=233 and so on.

As you go further and further out, the ratio of one number to the previous number starts to converge on Phi, which is 1.61803…For example, 233/144= 1.618055… It’s already starting to get pretty close. if you went further out in the series, you would get an even closer approximation of Phi.

In geometry a “Golden Rectangle” is one where the length divided by the height has the ratio of Phi.

There is also a “Golden Spiral” or “Fibonacci Spiral”. Take a Golden Rectangle and start dividing it into further Golden Rectangles. If you draw a spiral that follows the borders of these rectangles, then you get an approximation of a Fibonacci Sprial:

How is the Pentagram Related to the Golden Ratio?

The Pentagram contains several dimensions that result in a Golden Ratio. This page has a great explanation of it. Here is another way of looking at it:

In this diagram, the length of each segment is related by the Golden Ratio:

a/b = Phi

b/c = Phi

c/d = Phi

The Golden Ratio Appears Throughout Nature and Art

First I will start this section with a disclaimer. Many of the examples below are disputed. The criticism is confirmation bias: when you start looking for the Golden Ratio, you start finding evidence of it everywhere. In fact, this phenomenon of finding the Golden Ratio everywhere has been hilariously mocked by the parody Twitter account Fibonacci Perfection. At the risk of being mocked, I still personally find some of these examples compelling and interesting enough to include in this blog post.

I read that the Taj Majal used the Golden Ratio in some of its’ proportions. I had to see for myself. I overlaid a picture I found that had a Golden Spiral with a series of Golden Rectangles on top of a picture of the Taj Majal. See for yourself:

Taj Mahal Golden Ratio (click for larger)

To me, it sure appears that the distance between the pillars and outer edge of the dome follow the Golden Ratio. If you look closer there appear to be other distances that follow this ratio.

Another example in architecture is the Parthenon, although that has been disputed.

Some people say that features in the human face follows the Golden Ratio, and so we may find objects or art that display the Golden Ratio to be pleasing. So even if the Greeks didn’t build the Parthenon to follow the Golden Ratio on purpose, maybe they designed it with similar dimensions because they thought it looked most appealing.

In nature, there are many examples. I already mentioned the human face. Other features such as the length of each segment of your fingers, starting at your wrist follow this ratio. This is a neat article with a lot of examples. One that I found kind of mind-blowing was that many species of flowers have a number of petals found in the Fibonacci Series.

3 petals – Lilies

5 petals – Trillium, Buttercups, Roses

8 petals – Delphinium, Bloodroot

13 petals – Marigolds, Black-Eyed Susans

21 petals – Shasta Daisy

34 petals – Field Daisies, Pyrethrum

The theory as to why so many features of plants would follow this ratio is that it has to do with the most efficient use of space. Plants have to efficiently use sunlight, so it would make sense that their leaves and other features would arrange to maximize their use of surface area.

More famously are the examples of the Golden Spiral in nature. The hurricane, spiral galaxy and Nautilus sea shells are all examples of things that are Golden Spirals, or very close.

So, what is the meaning of the Pentagram then?

The Pentagram has a direct relationship with the Golden Ratio, and the Golden Ratio has a relationship with so many things found in nature. So to me, the Pentagram symbolizes this relationship between math and nature. No one knows why this symmetry exists in nature or why so many natural phenomenon would follow the Golden Ratio. The Pentagram also symbolizes this mystery. It’s an acknowledgment that there are forces at work which we don’t fully understand but can appreciate.

Posted on November 17, 2015November 17, 2015 by Dan

Five Ways a Beginner Can Get Into 3D Printing

3D Printed Pair Of Pliers — A customized pair of pliers I made with 3D printing for a customer

If you want to learn about 3D printing, try it out or even get a product made, it’s never been easier. There are some limitations but for the most part you can create any shape you can think of with 3D printing, and in some cases even create interlocking parts. This is what makes 3D printing so amazing (and addictive). Here are five ways you can get started:

1. Use a 3D printing service like Shapeways

Shapeways is the best one in my opinion but there are others like Kraftwurx and i.Materialise. All of them are pretty similar. You need to have a CAD model that you upload to their site. Then you can order the model in a number of different materials. Small plastic prints will only run a few dollars plus shipping. Larger prints will cost more. They also offer many metals, including some precious metals. Those can run anywhere from around $10 up into the hundreds of dollars. It all depends on the size and metal that is chosen.

Shapeways also is great because they have a model checker. After you upload a file, it will show you exactly where the problem areas are. This way you can go back and redesign your item without ordering to find out later that they couldn’t make it, or worse, get a print sent to you that did not turn out correctly.

2. Easy Creator Apps

There are several “Easy Creator” apps on Shapeways’ web site and there are others out there as well such as Monstermatic. These allow you to customize or create a 3D model without needing to know any CAD software. The 2D to 3D print creator takes a black and white 2D image and simply extrudes it into a third dimension to give it depth. If you know how to use any kind of graphics software, you can use this app to make it into a 3D print. With that one it will even change the depth of the print depending on the shade of gray. There are several others you can look at here.

3. Hire a designer

If what you are trying to make is too complicated to be made with any of the Easy Creator apps, then you could hire a designer to create the 3D model for you. There are a few ways you could do this. You could post a listing to a freelance hiring service such as Elance or Upwork. These are global services and you can usually find someone who will do the work for a reasonable price. You could also look in the Shapeways forums sections dedicated to linking designers with people who need something designed.

4. Use the Thingiverse

The Thingiverse may already have a 3D model of the item you want. This is a place people can share 3D models. You are free to download them and modify them. However, if you are planning to make a product from it for sale, that is frowned upon. It is meant to be more of a forum for makers and tinkerers. That’s perfect though for someone just starting out.

5. Learn a simple CAD program like Sketchup or OnShape

There are a ton of different free CAD programs out there. I use Blender to create my 3D printed jewelry. That one will take some time to learn, but there are a ton of good Youtube tutorials showing you how to use Blender, which is how I learned. Programs like Sketchup or OnShape are much easier to pick up for a beginner. Search Youtube to find tutorials for those as well. More advanced programs like Blender will have more features than Sketchup but the simple ones work just fine when you are starting out. You can also download files from the Thingiverse, bring them into Sketchup and then modify them.

Posted on November 10, 2015November 10, 2015 by Dan

How Instagram Can Grow Your Business

I finally got on Instagram earlier this year and I’ve been blown away by it for a number of reasons. It’s done a number of things to help my little startup business grow a little. Here I will share some of my experiences with it.

Interaction Is High On Instagram

The interaction I get from Instagram is way, way more than any other social media platform I’ve tried, and I’ve tried a lot of them. I get a small amount of interaction from using hashtags. For me, the best one seems to be #3dprinting. There is a growing community of 3D printing hobbyists and a lot of them are searching Instagram for people also doing things with 3D printing.

However, I get much more interaction from searching hashtags relevant to my business and interacting with people. Anything related to the various Celtic symbols, or Irish topics work really well for me. Ocasionally I will find people with pictures of tattoos of the same symbols that I’ve used in my designs. Once, bizarrely, I found someone had made a tattoo out of my Leaf Pendant design. This is a totally original design I made from scratch. It was really surreal finding it on Instagram. They told me they found it through Google Image Search, and liked it so much they got a tattoo of it.

I will interact with the people I find through hashtags by liking and commenting on some of their pictures. They will usually return the favor and do the same to some of my pictures as well. I don’t get this kind of interaction with Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest as much. Sometimes I will follow them or they will follow me, or both. Mainly through this kind of interaction I now have over 1,900 followers.

I also try to interact with the people I am already following. Since I am following over 1,000 people, it can be difficult to stay on top of it. But I try. I think this is also pretty important, but hard. What I’ve found works is checking my feed, and when I see a picture I like I will check out the rest of the person’s feed. I’ll look at their other recent pictures and like some of those as well, and maybe leave a comment or two. This way I can keep some level of interaction with the many people I’m following. If I waited until I saw each of their pictures individually in my feed, I might never see all of them. And again, if I go and like 3 or 4 pictures from someone I’m following, often they will will return the favor and check out my recent pictures and like a few in return. Again, this kind of back-and-forth or interaction just seems to be part of the culture on Instagram.

I’ve Gotten Product Ideas From Instagram

The idea for this Heart Celtic Knot Necklace came from someone I met on Instagram

There have been a few people who found my things on Instagram who loved my designs. I have made a few sales from people who fell in love with one of my pieces and had to have it and bought it on the spot. This is rare, but it has happened a couple times. I can’t say I’ve had this happen at all though on other social media sites. I have found people that like my designs but I can’t recall a time when someone went and bought something right then after seeing it on Facebook or Twitter for example.

Another few people have discovered my designs, and requested custom designs. They looked over my things and I didn’t have quite the one they were looking for. They reached out to me and asked if I could make one for them. Some of the requests were Celtic-related and others were not. Most of my new designs this year were from people who asked for custom designs on Instagram. So instead of trying to figure out what designs I should make that customers might like, my customers actually told me exactly what they wanted. No guessing involved. It’s also likely that others will like these designs if one person already does.

One that came about this way was the Celtic Heart Knot pendant. One Instagram user requested that as this custom design. I made it for them and they really liked it. It’s still a fairly new design but it the popularity of it is promising.

I Marketed Those Same Product Ideas With Instagram

Mouse Suicide — Instagram photo of @mousesuicide wearing the Celtic Heart Knot Necklace. This picture got over 1,800 likes

Not only did Instagram give me product ideas, but I also used Instagram to market these products after I made them. So Instagram actually completed a product cycle for me, from idea, to creating, to marketing and selling. In a case or two, the person who had it custom-made bought the item posted a picture of it. That got it exposure to their followers, which is really nice, even if the audience might be relatively small.

I started looking for opportunities to collaborate with people on Instagram that might have a bigger audience. Because of the community and interactive nature of Instagram, there are many, many users with 10,000, 20,000 and even 100,000 followers. Some call these people “influencers”. I started looking for people that had shown interest in Celtic or Irish-related things, that had a lot of followers, and that had a good level of interaction on their posts. I even found some that had posted pictures of themselves wearing Celtic jewelry, or something very similar already.

When looking for an Influencer, I put more importance on how many comments their pictures get. It really speaks to the level of engagement when a picture has 100+ comments. There are some people that can get 500 likes on a picture but zero comments. I’d go with the one with more comments almost every time. It means their followers are interacting a lot more. Clicking the button to like a picture is good, but more passive than participating in a conversation.

In any case, I highly recommend trying out Instagram if you are selling products like this.

Posted on November 2, 2015November 2, 2015 by Dan

3D Printing Is (Still) Going to Change the World

I had known about “rapid prototyping” for a while, which is what 3D printing was called for many years. My mind was blown though when I discovered Shapeways and saw how inexpensive 3D printing had become in 2012. Part of the reason I got into Celtic jewelry design is because I wanted to learn about 3D printing.

The hype around 3D printing was sky high as recently as a year ago. Amazing new products that could only be made with 3D printing were everywhere. Clothing designs made with 3D printing were in fashion shows. People were 3D printing food. 3D printing stocks were sky high. It seemed like the potential for this technology was limitless. Since then the stocks have tanked and enthusiasm has waned. What happened?

Nothing Happened

Nothing has really changed. The hype just got way ahead of the technology. 3D printing is still going to change the world eventually. It still may be many decades before all of us have a 3D printer in our house that we use to print products rather than buying them in a physical store or online retailer. Hobbyists and tinkerers will largely be the ones still buying them for personal use for a while.

This is normal for a new technology. Look at another technology that everyone was supposed to have in their home: personal computers. Computers existed in the 1960s. It wasn’t until the 1970s that the very first mass produced PC models were introduced. The only people using them at that time though were some businesses and hobbyists. I can remember way back to the 1980s when they started to spread a bit. Even then, this was still a fairly “early adoption” stage. It wasn’t until really the advent of the internet that really made them take off. The internet was the killer application that made everyone that didn’t already own one, want to buy one. The entire cycle took 30 to 40 years to run its course.

3D printing is basically in that early stage that PCs were in the 1970s or maybe early 1980s. It could easily be another 10 or 20 years before everyone decides that they want one. Like the PC, some product may come along that can only be made with a 3D printer that everyone might suddenly want. Time will tell.

This article talks about the “hype cycle” around new technologies like this. We are in the trough after the big peak on the graph. Ahead is slow and steady growth for many years to come.

The Impact on Manufacturing Will Be Enormous

In the meantime, 3D printing is going to make a bigger and more immediate impact in manufacturing. 3D printing has already been used for years by industry just to make mock-ups or prototypes of new products. 3D printers are finally reaching the stage where the quality is good enough to make products right out of the printer.

There are tons and tons of industries just drooling over 3D printing (or if they aren’t, they should be). The reason is because 3D printing is potentially the leanest of any manufacturing process to ever exist. If you can create a product with 3D printing then there is hardly any inventory. Everything can be made to order, and go from raw material directly to finished product in one step. This is just an example to illustrate what I’m talking about:

The process that 3D printing seems to be replacing fairly often is casting. Casting metals or plastics is a pretty efficient and inexpensive process today, but it has drawbacks. Casting only makes sense if you are going to produce big quantities of identical products, because you have to buy a mold. Molds can vary in price. In cases where molds are expensive, you need to buy large quantities to spread the cost of the mold over a large number of products. Then, because you just mass produced a large number of products, you have to carry all that inventory. Also in the flowchart I put a couple secondary operations. It is unusual for cast products to come directly out of the mold and not require some kind of secondary operation. And if you made 1,000 items in the casting step, now 1,000 items are waiting in the queue to go through the next step in the process.

3D printing is kind of the Holy Grail of lean manufacturing. It eliminates the need for a mold. So there is no need to buy a huge quantity of products to offset the cost of the mold. You can now make items one at a time, made to order. There is no more inventory to carry. The entire goal of lean manufacturing is to eliminate inventory at every step in the process. Inventory is money, and therefore waste. Today a lot of 3D printed products require secondary processes that I did not show. However, the need for secondary operations will be reduced as 3D printing quality improves. Also, since you are only making one piece at a time, at most there will be one piece waiting in the queue at that secondary operation, not 1,000.

Another thing that 3D printing provides is infinite customization. Instead of using a mold to make 1,000 identical products, you could use a 3D printer to make 1,000 unique products tailored specifically to each customer’s wants or needs. Here is one example. Athletic shoe behemoth Nike is looking at using 3D printing to make custom cushioning in their shoes:

Nike’s 3D Printing Ramp Up: Which Companies Will It Partner With?

Nike (NYSE:NKE) announced last week at its investor day that it’s turbocharging its 3D-printing efforts. The athletic shoe and apparel behemoth has been increasingly embracing the innovative technology for prototyping. However, several comments from top management suggest that the company intends to use 3D printing for general manufacturing of new cushioning systems, and for the production of custom cushioning systems tailored to an individual’s needs.

Large-scale manufacturing is surely a ways off, but the customized cushions could be a nearer-term goal. Said Chief Operating Officer Eric Sprunk: “Very recently, we’ve made a series of design and manufacturing discoveries with 3D printing that we believe will allow us to deliver a completely new, personal, performance cushioning system.”

Warehouses Will Shrink And Possibly Become Obsolete

When 3D printing becomes better at making final products, then the need for storing huge amounts of products in warehouses will diminish. Imagine Amazon in the distant future. Instead of needing to have enormous warehouses full of products with elaborate storage and retrieval systems, they could in theory just have several 3D printers that make products to order. Perhaps they would need to store the raw materials required for the 3D printing process, but this is much, much simpler (and far cheaper) than storing thousands and thousands of finished products.

The other application that could be impacted greatly is the service parts industry for cars, tractors, and other equipment. Let’s just look at cars. Right now, automotive companies have to store service parts in a warehouse. They could sit there for years, just waiting for someone that needs one to order one. This is very expensive. For a new part, they don’t know exactly how many are going to sell, so they have to make an educated guess at how many to stock. They also have to decide how many years they are going to store them. If you happen to own an older car, you may have a really hard time finding certain parts, because they only decided to store the parts for 10 years after the model went out of production, for example.

If you could use a 3D printer to make service parts to order, all these problems are eliminated. No need to guess how many parts to store because they will all be made to order. No need to decide how many years to store the parts for, because the file will reside on a hard drive, ready to be made by a 3D printer at any time, even decades from now. If you own an old car then you would not have a problem obtaining the parts you need. Jay Leno owns a 3D printer that he uses to make parts for his antique car collection. There’s no reason this idea couldn’t be replicated on a larger scale.

People who are bearish on 3D printing stocks may want to re-think their position (full disclosure: I own a few shares of 3D Systems Stock and Stratasys stock). Even if every house doesn’t own a 3D printer someday, they will still be widely used by industry. The most important research going on right now isn’t necessarily in making 3D printers faster and better (although that effort will never really end). The important research is in materials technology, and coming up with new materials that 3D printers can use to make products faster, sturdier, and more attractive. The materials used by 3D printers will likely be proprietary. Whichever company can come up with the best materials will likely win. A 3D printing company may sell only one 3D printer to a company like Nike, but they will be providing the material that the printer needs to make those shoe cushions for many years to come.

3D printing is here to stay. It’s just going to take a bit longer for it’s full impact to be felt to individuals. Smart manufacturing companies should be trying to figure out how to incorporate this powerful technology right now.

Posted on October 24, 2015 by Dan

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness Turns 20

It might seem strange for a jewelry designer to be inspired by music. It’s not so much the music as it is the ambition and meaning behind the music that is what I find so interesting about it. Reading this really cool retrospective of the album inspired me to write this blog post.

This album came out I was in college. I was already addicted to the Smashing Pumpkins’ previous album, Siamese Dream. I bought Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness the very first day it came out, and I still have it. I remember not liking it the first few times I listened to it. It was quite a departure from Siamese Dream. It took a few listens before some of the songs started to draw me in. There were other songs that literally took dozens of listens before I really started to like them. Over the years, my favorite song on the album has changed several times. Today, it is “By Starlight”. At one time or another, it was “1979” or “Thirty Three” or “Thru The Eyes of Ruby”. This is also the mark of a great album. I take something different from it today than I did at a younger age.

Back when this first came out I didn’t understand my own tastes very well yet. I knew what I liked, but I didn’t really understand why. It took me years to really understand why I liked certain things so much, such as this album, or a book or movie like Cloud Atlas, or intricate Celtic symbols.

You Can Get “Lost Inside” Of It

M83 Hurry Up We're Dreaming — M83 Hurry Up We’re Dreaming

I read an article about M83, talking about their album “Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming” (which is also one of my favorite albums). M83 songwriter Anthony Gonzalez said when they were making it, they wanted to make something big and ambitious, and cited Mellon Collie as an example of the kind of album they were aiming for. It’s funny because the two albums are so starkly different musically, but yet do have a lot of things in common artistically. He said of Mellon Collie that he “got lost inside of it every time”.

This idea of getting “lost inside” something was the best description I’ve heard yet for why I like albums and art like this. What does it mean to be able to get “lost inside” art? To me it means that when you focus on it, you forget where you are for a bit. It temporarily takes you to another place. While you are there, there are a number of different ideas to explore. Also, if you listen to it more than once, you might get a different meaning out of it the next time, or notice something you overlooked, or see something in a different light. So while on the surface you are experiencing it by hearing the music or reading the words, there is plenty going on that you might be trying to figure out consciously or subconsciously.

Mellon Collie does this in a number of ways. There is the artwork. You could write a long article just about the album art (and someone has). Most young people like me from suburbia had never seen anything like the artwork before. The artwork also tells you that the music is detailed and there is a lot going on with it. It’s asking you to look for details in the music just like a complicated collage is asking you to look at details.

Another thing you can get “lost inside” is the lyrics. This was the first album that the Smashing Pumpkins included lyrics with it. The book with the lyrics also had art on it as well. Since there were so many songs, you could spend some time trying to glean meaning or making connections between songs.

Finally, there was the music itself. The first song is piano only. The last song ends with the same single piano, but the melody has changed slightly. What to make of this? Then there is a a daytime/nightime theme going on. The first disk is called “Dawn to Dusk” and the second one is called “Twilight to Starlight”. The songs kind of fit under these two broad ideas. It’s another hint at a bigger picture that this album somehow fits into, but what is it? How you get lost is in trying to figure all of these things out.

How Does Art Do Pull Someone “Inside”?

So above I mentioned several reasons as to why I believe this album draws people in to where they can get lost inside of it. I’ve had this same feeling about a number of other things, whether it be an album, a book, or a movie. In general, all of these things that I love have a few things in common:

They are all very complex. I already mentioned the things I think make Mellon Collie so complex. Another thing that kind of helps is the overall length. They have to be large in scale, whatever they are. My favorite book and movie is Cloud Atlas for both. The book is 509 pages and the story structure is incredibly complicated. It makes you think. The movie is possibly even more complicated, the way it switches from one story to another, and there is meaning behind why they jump when they do. The book does less jumping around.

They give you a number of different ideas to explore. Mellon Collie has several big, overarching themes it could be about. Is it about one of them or all of them? One of them is definitely youth and growing up. Another is life and death. Another is simple and pure nostalgia. Another is lamenting growing up. You get the idea. These are all big, big ideas, and the album could be about one of them or all of them. Cloud Atlas is similar in this respect. Is it book about materialism (all the stories are materially connected even though they happen decades or centuries apart). Is it about reincarnation? Is it about spiritualism? Is it about good and evil? Heaven and Hell? I wrote about that possibility in this blog post.

They leave certain things to your imagination. All of these leave tantalizing clues that certain things are interconnected or related, but none of them don’t ever come out and say it. That would kill it. All the different possible meanings I list out in the paragraph above were actually all invented by me. There are clues within these things that led me to these ideas, but I had to connect some dots to come up with them.

What Does This Have To Do With Celtic Symbols?

I wrote this blog post to kind of show where my inspiration comes from, and what I aim for with some of my designs. I basically design symbols. I have a long page where I try to explain the meaning of different Celtic symbols. Even there though, I am just explaining the meaning that others have assigned to these symbols over time. The original Celtic knot symbols that I designed myself do have their own meanings to me but I try not to explain them too much. Ultimately, the question is: what do they mean to you?

In any case, if you look at some of these Celtic symbols, you can appreciate them on a basic level. You may just find the shape attractive. However, there is more going on, like in the art I talk about above. The basic shape is one thing. The shape could be made up of multiple loops that are interwoven. The number and shape of the individual loops can also mean something. How they are woven together also can mean something. I’d also encourage you to look at the negative space in some of these symbols (the area between the lines). In some of them, that has meaning. I can also give another clue to the meaning in how I present the piece in pictures on my site.