BME: Body Modification Ezine

How did you first break into the jewelry industry?

For me the jewelry journey began because of my mom. She was a ceramic artist, and she helped me explore and study art. I ended up going to the University of Georgia for jewelry making and metalsmithing, and I got my bachelor’s of fine art there. Then, my first nice job out of college was working at a local jewelry store, where I met Monica.

I was always interested in jewelry as a kid. Looking back at old photos, I always had layers of necklaces on, whether it was like made from string, or — I remember this one colorful ring that I used to wear that had a bunch of different colors of stones. I don’t know if they were real. My grandmother was very into jewelry as well. Her birthday was in April, so she was very interested in diamonds, and I always had an interest in it, too. And when I found out that you could go and become a gemologist, I was like, “oh, this can make my rock-tumbling dreams of being a kid come true.” Every day could be a fun time with gemstones. So I worked with a diamond dealer for a little bit, and after that I went and worked at the fine jewelry store, which is where I met Michelle.

How did you go from working together to starting your own jewelry company?

I had been there for four years and Monica had been there for about two. We sat next to each other, and both of us, while it was a beautiful environment, it just wasn’t really satisfying our needs of wanting to be creative. So after a long while, our boss gave us a little bit of budget to go buy some jewelry for the store, and we were really excited, because it was one of the very first times we were allowed to pick and choose what we were selling on the floor. Our interaction was different than how it was in the office, where we kind of worked side by side on our own projects. Here we had to work together to pick and choose the right kind of jewelry, make sure we stayed in the budget. We realized that we didn’t fight once, and we worked so well together. So then I asked her, would you like to be my business partner?

And I said yes! It was on our way back from the Tucson Gem Show. I was driving, and Michelle’s like, “do you want to work together, like be my business partner?” I’m like “absolutely.” We were still working at the jewelry store at the time, and after hours we would meet up at my house and do Modern Mood.

Based on your website, you started out with non-body jewelry, right? Fine jewelry. How did you transition to body jewelry?

Our experience was always in fine jewelry, and we worked with some gorgeous things, like 10-carat diamonds engagement rings, watches that are like $100,000. We grew appreciation for those things. Antique jewelry that people came to sell, estate jewelry and watches, so those things were some of our favorites. We started to sell our own regular jewelry, necklaces, bracelets, rings, and non-body jewelry earrings. 

I think it was around 2017, 2018 that’s when the ear constellation was really in a full swing, and Monica and I, we personally wanted to get our ears curated. It really caught our attention and we really like dainty, sparkly things. So we wanted those stacked looks. We brought our designs to a local piercer, Marilyn Mena-Scott at HTC Uptown, and she said, “Well, those designs are really cute, but no, you cannot get pierced with them.” She showed us how threadless jewelry is supposed to look, so then we made a few batches. We sent it to her, and all of the pins broke. The first few batches, we just worked on perfecting it, and for about a year, they’re the ones that carried our jewelry exclusively. After about a year, we felt confident that we now had a product that works well and is also pretty, so Monica started visiting different studios one by one.

At the time I had just moved to Ohio, so I went to Ohio and Michigan, and met with some people. One of my friends lives in New York, or she did at the time, and so I did some cold calling there, and a few people really liked it, it was well received. So then we went from there, and Michelle and I started going on the road as much as we could until Covid hit. That’s when we took a little break from the traveling. People were mostly online, which is still the case, but we do still travel and see people.

Oh, and I do want to mention that in 2019 we went to the [Association of Professional Piercers] conference in Vegas for the first time. We wanted to see what it’s all about. To be honest with you, we weren’t very exposed to the body modification world, other than some facial piercings, ear piercings, and such. So when we did go there, we were obviously stunned and fascinated, and there was so much to learn, and we loved the vibe.

Yeah, it was really cool. I remember seeing some slides from the classes, and like, my jaw was on the floor. It’s like, wow, like, that is so cool, and that people are so passionate about it, and it makes them feel so good, and themselves. It was awesome. 

And speaking of feeling themselves, working at that really nice jewelry store, while it exposed us to great customer service — how to work with jewelry, jewelry manufacturing, and all that — we had to put ourselves on a very specific standard. We had to look a certain way, we couldn’t have colorful hair, or even nails that are anything beyond white or red. Anything else is kind of looked down upon, and I had to wear blazers, work pants, and things like that. And we really missed just dressing for fun.

Now, we can go to our meetings and whatever we want to wear, we can wear. If we’re feeling like getting dressed up, cool. If we want to wear leisure stuff, great. I think both of us really like that part of the industry, not having to be in that tiny little box all the time.

So, as you transitioned into body jewelry, what did you find challenging?

I think, because we are not piercers, at first, people were like, “well, why should we buy from you?” Like, you’re not a piercer, you’re not from the body modification industry, type of thing. So we basically were like, we don’t claim to be that, and we want to learn as much as possible. We leaned on people within the industry to educate us, and we honed in on designs that we were good at. What we care about is good quality and these designs, and [piercers] can show us what the specifications are, how to make it safe and all these things. I think being more of a listener and a spectator, to this day, there are certain things that we reach out to close friends of ours in the industry to just say, “hey, we’re making this piece, what do you think about it? We like the way it looks, but how do you think it will function on the body?”

Another challenge is that the standards are constantly evolving as more medical things and more discoveries are made. So the challenge is that we not only need to keep a good standard, we always need to be on the lookout to renew ourselves. And on top of that, each piercer might have a certain preference and the standard varies a little bit from studio to studio and piercer to piercer. One example is that some piercers do not like to have any engraving on the side of the jewelry, even if it’s not touching the skin. We definitely keep the back of the designs solid, mirror finish, no texture, no engraving whatsoever. But for brand verification purposes — and sometimes verifying between natural diamonds and lab-grown diamonds quickly —  we do engrave “14 kt”, our logo, and maybe “L” for lab grown or “N” for natural, or CZ for CZs. We’ve had a few clients say, “Hey I don’t want to work with any jewelry that has engraving on the side,” so we have exchanged the jewelry for the ones that don’t have any engraving. We have always been able to find a solution, but we’re not expecting there to be no challenge in our upcoming future, we’re always ready for it.

In terms of brand verification, I know you’ve dealt with some copycat designs. What is it like as an artist to see your work copied?

It’s tough. Definitely doesn’t feel great. From contacting some of those companies directly asking for clarification, we have found out that there are some people who, one, just doesn’t care, or, two, they are not making their own designs — they’re just whitelabeling designs from certain manufacturers. They have told us, “hey, we did not know that this was a copy of your jewelry, we will stop selling this.” 

We know that their goal is different than ours. Our goal is to have as many of our pieces be as unique as possible. I go to clothing boutiques sometimes and don’t care — or don’t know, because I’m not that well-versed in fashion — I just pick up a top, think it’s cute, and then maybe later I find out, “oh, this looks like a dupe of xyz.” If I wanted something really unique and authentic, then I would do a little bit more research and go to that specific boutique for that one thing. It’s just a different platform. 

It’s interesting, it’s kind of been picking up a little bit more lately. It felt a little bit different seeing our designs being copied from places like Etsy, where they turn it into regular jewelry or they don’t have a ton of brand identity. Then there are some other body jewelry companies that are our contemporaries that are like, you know, millimeter-by-millimeter, and so that feels a little bit more uncomfortable. 

But Monica, you have a good point on how teeny-tiny designs that just involve one or two gemstones, there’s only so many variations.

And we try and put our own spin on everything. Where if you were to look at it, that finish is definitely Modern Mood, or whatever it is. But there is going to be some crossover, I think, just like in anything. But overall, we try and keep on designing and finding other pieces, and just keep going, because there’s really nothing we can, not much we can do about it.

So speaking about your designs, how do you find inspiration? What’s the process from initial idea to finish?

Especially at the very beginning stage of our company, we just wanted to stay as minimal and tiny as possible, because our goal is to be able to stack jewelry for the ear constellation. We were maybe using between one to five gemstones total for each design. Clean, high-polish, still very high-end looking, because that’s where we were coming from culture wise. Then it evolved into a little bit more dangle, we started making a lot more charms and chains maybe five or six years in. That’s become a big part of our identity, too, something playful. 

Since we do have that Modern Mood DNA, a lot of our limited designs do have that essence, too, but because those gems are not cut in bulk or anything like that, it’s a fun way to do some other things that maybe we can’t do with all of our core designs.

Yeah, because they’re larger and colorful and that’s not typical for our collection per se, but we really do love designing with those gemstones. Especially you, Monica, you come from the gemology background and we’re just gaga over every little gemstone we find at the gem show, it’s fun.

It’s so fun. And Michelle had mentioned before, but we really love all the different things that gemstones do, phenomena, like cat’s eye, or lighting up red under fluorescent light, or whatever it is. Those special things that, maybe if you just bought the piece, you wouldn’t know, but then you’re out one night and you’re under a light and it’s red. I feel like those things, some people seek them out and other people find out after a while, like, “oh, my jewelry does this cool things that I didn’t know it did before.”

I think that’s something really cool about gems, there are so many different natural formations.

Yeah, and jewelry itself is such a personal thing. The more we make jewelry and we hear how the end customer is using their jewelry for themselves, when we design engagement rings or a little name necklace we sometimes make for our friends and family, it’s all about the feelings. And each gemstone, if it’s somebody’s birthstone, you have a unique emotional attachment to it, and it’s literally as unique and personal as it gets. And that makes it even more fun for us.

How would you describe the vibe of Modern Mood?

Sparkly. Happy. Dangly. Movement.

Yeah. Like, it’s a mood.

Your design perspective definitely really comes across, I feel like your pieces are very identifiable. 

Last question: do you have a favorite gemstone?

We love a natural diamond. I think diamonds are perfect. I’ve had my engagement and wedding ring for 11 years, and every time I look at them, I get lost in it. And the fact that it’s all natural too, there’s no one that’s the same. In some ways they are all unique, so I love that.

I’ve got to say diamond as well, I’m on that same page. They’re just really special, and the fact that they do come out of the ground. I know my [diamond’s] inclusion, I’m like, okay, this is mine, it has that little thing in it.

And a little diamond sprinkle on any design elevates everything.

Diving right in — what did you get into first, body jewelry or glassmaking?

II got into glass specifically to make body jewelry. I pierced my cheeks initially at a 14 gauge and I had them for 18 months, then decided to retire them and go bigger. We were going to start at two gauge, seven millimeters was the goal. So I went to the [Association of Professional Piercers] Expo two years in a row, I talked to some other makers, and a conch pin was like the closest thing that I could find in stone.

I had a friend who was a pipe maker, and I hit him up, and I was like, “Hey, man, these are the exact dimensions I’m looking for” —  I remember buying him a metal digital caliper — “the flare’s got to be nine millimeters and the wearable has to be seven mil.” He gave it a try, and he ended up bringing me a whole bunch of things that were just comically out of spec. The flare on one of them was like the size of my thumb, all over the board. He finally got fed up — he’s a very free-form pipe maker, glass artist, the glass is going to be the size and shape that it wants to be, and so he was like, “you can come out and you can play around with rods on the bench and see if you can figure it out.” 

It took me quite a few tries to make anything that even resembled a plug. My first pair of plugs, I found this rod on the bench that was perfectly seven millimeters, but it was a striking red color, so it starts clear and the more you flame work it over time, it develops more color and turns red. If you do this nice and evenly, it turns a transparent ruby. If you overwork it, it turns into a muddy brown red. It was my first time making anything, I overworked the hell out of it. [The plugs] looked blood colored. My first set of cheek plugs were like an inch long, they looked like catfish antennae, and they were just this terrible blood-red color. But I made them, and I was proud of them, because they fit the way they were supposed to. And then from then on I was figuring out how to make plugs.

It sounds like you got into it out of necessity, almost.

Yeah, I couldn’t find what I was looking for, and it didn’t seem too hard to make. The equipment is what ended up being the biggest barrier. I worked in [my friends’] shop for quite some time, but saving up and buying all of the equipment needed to do it myself took years and years.

I’m sure there’s a lot involved, but can you give me a rundown of the basic equipment?

Yeah, so I’ve got my torch and my kiln. My torch is a GTT samurai, it’s like a $4,000 torch, but I can do everything, from little tiny three mil plugs up to a two-inch, solid rod on that. I also have a lathe that spins the glass evenly for me, for making the cleanest flares and all that. The kiln is probably one of the bigger ones you can get of small, cheap kilns. I think my kiln was like $2,000 and for body jewelry, I can tile as much body jewelry as I can make in that thing. It’s mostly made for small vessels and trinkets, so body jewelry doesn’t take up a lot of space in it. 

Going a bit further back, can you tell me how you first got into body modification?

I worked counter in quite a few tattoo and piercing shops. From an early age, I was always told that, like, piercing my ears was okay, but anything else was not okay. So I never pierced my ears, I only just recently, six months ago, finally pierced my ears for the first time. I jumped in for the face immediately when I was 16, I was like freshly kicked out of the house, and by the time I was 17, my lip on either side was stretched to like two gauge. When I finally stretched them that big, the angles that they were pierced at — because I got them both independently pierced when I was young and dumb — you could tell that they were off, so like I retired those ones. I had my cheeks done small, and cheeks done small were probably the worst piercing that I ever had. They abscessed. They felt sharp after a long day of smiling. It felt like my cheeks were just like cut up from all of the friction. One of the piercers that we had there, he was big into body mods, and his name’s Eric, hardcore piercer, he’s got implants all over his arms and stuff, and he was like, “you know, we could do them big,” and I was like, “man, what do you think about that?” And he’s like, “I don’t know, I mean, big things tend to heal better,” and I was open to that, so he ended up doing my cheeks at a two gauge. Then he did my philtrum at a two gauge.

It’s so counterintuitive that bigger things heal better.

Yeah, the way that it was always explained to me is like, if you heal something small, your body kind of thinks of it like a splinter, where it’s gonna exert as much energy as it can to push that tiny little thing out. But if you get something giant lodged in your arm, your body’s gonna heal around it. I don’t know, it always seemed to work, and I’ve had a lot of people be like ‘cheek piercings are not viable in the long term,’ and I’m like, I don’t know, I’m going on 10 years and I don’t really have a single problem with them.

Well, that sounds pretty long term to me. 

So, after you started making jewelry, how did you get to a point where you were selling to other people as well?

When I was working counter and I was starting to make plugs, I was doing everything by hand and I had a few local people that I was selling to. But I just wasn’t scalable in the beginning until I ended up getting the lathe. Once I got the lathe, I had a few friends that were opening shops and didn’t yet have accounts with all of the bigger names, and so they reached out and were like, “Hey, I’m looking for an initial inventory for my shop, is that something that you would do?” And so it was small business helping small maker, and I kind of got into it that way, and then word of mouth has just slowly spread.

That’s great.

Yeah, and now it’s been my full-time gig for like eight years now. I’ve been blowing glass for 12, but full time for about eight … It was definitely a ramp up. The thing about being a small business owner is I’m also new at marketing and photography and social media. There’s all of these facets to it that I never really thought I would be as much into as I am now. It’s a learning curve being like, okay, now you have to be the marketing guy, and you have to figure out what time posts do best, and like what format the media does best in for marketing. I’m getting a lot better at photography. Glass is notoriously hard to photograph, but I’m slowly figuring it out.

So, in addition to plugs, I know you make those needle pendants and other types of piercing-related non-body jewelry. When did you start doing that?

The needle pendants actually started, I think 2017 and I did them kind of as an impromptu fundraiser to help raise money to go to Oslo Suscon. I did a big drop of them and I  sold out, I sold like 75 of them. There’s a picture on my Instagram of me holding a receipt that’s as tall as I am at the post office, grinning like crazy. Then they were just on my website for a long time, and they didn’t get much traction. Then I started doing them again as a monthly drop, and now that’s it’s a monthly drop, they sell out pretty fast every month.

I saw you also did two other things — the acrylic body jewelry and titanium shavings.

[My partner] Lynn and I went and toured Body Circle, and we’re walking around, and Lynn was just like enamored with the shiny titanium scrap and these big buckets, and was like, “Brian, you should encase that,” and I was like, “okay,” and Lynn asked, “hey, do you think we could get like a little bit of that for Brian to encase?” and they gave us like a 55-gallon garbage bag full. It’s been a lot of fun. 

It’s kind of a process with that. I learned what titanium fires are like, because when titanium catches on fire, it requires a special fire extinguisher. Once it catches on fire, it just doesn’t stop burning until it burns itself out, which is pretty quick in the small amounts that I’m using to encase. But if you accidentally catch it on fire while it’s sealing in, you just have to set it in the water bucket and look away.

I didn’t even know it could catch on fire.

Oh, yeah, it doesn’t usually, but it only does because it’s such thin shavings, it’s basically just it hits its flash point super low. But they’re super fun. They catch the light really well. It’s kind of a piercing nerd thing because it kind of looks like steel wool, and you know, you’ll have to explain what it is to people.

It’s a cool piece, I like the nerd explanation.

The piercer nerds love it, and the cool thing about it is that because it’s scrapped from [Body Circle’s] turning process, there will be, you know, a half-finished labret post in there, or like a circular that’s got threads sticking off of it, or random little chunks of body jewelry that didn’t make it.

That’s cool. And it sounds like you have a lot of scrap to work with.

Yeah, it has to go through a process because it’s covered in machining oil when I get it, so I have to run it through the ultrasonic cleaner with alcohol to get all of that off. Otherwise, as soon as the tube gets warm at all, that machining oil turns jet black in the tube, and it just smokes out the inside. So there’s a lot of little trial and error with that.

WSounds like it. But the final result is very cool!

Thank you! And then, the acrylic one, that was Lynn’s brainchild. Lynn was like, “there’s got to be a way you can encase a bunch of old crappy jewelry,” and that one turned out really fun, they’re really bright and vibrant, things we can’t do in modern body jewelry because we know better.

Right? Unfortunate that we can’t get some of that vibrancy, but the pendants sound like the next best thing. Is it tough to avoid melting the acrylic pieces?

Some of them do melt, and there’s a small amount of artistic “is that okay at the bottom?” I’d say there’s probably about a 40% fail rate with those, because their melt temperature is like 110 which is just so incredibly low with everything else that I’m sealing in. The whole tube can stand to get to about 400 degrees before any sort of tarnishing or discoloring happens, but yeah, with the acrylic, you’ll watch it as it’s, as it’s sealing in, you’re just like, “oh, that one’s a little too soft,” and then as it sets, sometimes it’ll make a cute little puddle on the bottom of it, where it all looks like it’s just melting cleanly. And then sometimes it’ll just all kind of turned black, and, melty.

Hazard of the medium, I guess.

Yeah, but like there’s other things I’ve done, moss encapsulations, I do the coyote teeth and moss, and again it’s a learning process. I never thought that I would know what burning teeth smell like, but like we live, we learn, we figure out our processes.

I think it’s cool the diversity of things you’ve encapsulated.

Thank you. It’s a simple technique to do, and a hard technique to do cleanly. When I started encapsulating things, my tubes were super extra long to try and keep the heat away from the things, and now I feel like I’m able to get them really short and tight and controlled, especially when I’m sealing matches. It’s really fun.

As you’ve been doing all of this, is there anything you’ve found unexpectedly difficult when it comes to body jewelry specifically?

Custom body jewelry is tricky. The thing I love and hate about body jewelry is that there is no standard. I’ll have people be like, “hey I just need a pair of plugs for my ears, whatever is standard,” and it’s just like, I don’t know what that means. Somebody ordering a pair of six millimeter plugs from me, standard for some people is a quarter inch wearable, and standard for other people is a half inch or more wearable, and there is sort of an industry agreed upon, acceptable length, but it also tends to be a little bit long for most people, because it’s safe, it’ll fit. One of the most difficult things is getting people to figure out their own measurements, so that I can make the thing that they actually need. It’s also really rewarding, though. That’s like one of my favorite things about making body jewelry, is being able to make something that actually fits somebody like it needs to.

Right, the pros and cons of making it to size.

The long and short of it is that measuring yourself is hard, and measuring what you need and want versus what you’re wearing can be difficult to get. Even for professional piercers, it can be trying, but that’s one of the unexpected difficulties, because if I make something standard, there’s still like a 50/50 chance that it won’t fit, because what they needed was not a standard plug.

Yeah, you can only have a standard if there’s a standard ear or whatever, and there isn’t. 

So, the opposite of that question, what have you found most rewarding or fun as you’ve done this?

I actually really like the monotony of making runs of single flare plugs. It’s almost zen-like to sit down and, like, today I’m making three-millimeter plugs, and I’m going to make them in clear and black and green and yellow, and just sitting down, and making every one to spec. I thought that I would hate that part, because it seems like just monotonous labor, but it’s really rewarding to watch the little pile of what you’re making grow in the kiln.