Galialay

Gosh it's been a while. I have just not been active... No good reason for it either - I was fired awhile ago so I've had plenty of time to do stuff but haven't been motivated.

But I'm here for now. Got a job lined up - waiting for the BG to pass. Man those things take forever. SMH Ha... jobs...

Well good news I have my Etsy store up and running. Itsycharms - I make polymer clay charms, pendants, mini-sculptures, KANDI cuffs, and sometimes Altoids Tin sculptures. I really like the custom order items - challenges! If you visit you can ask for a custom order too! Just click on the button on the left side "Request Custom Order".

You can also watch the ItsyCharms Tumblr blog to see items that don't show up in the store - custom orders, things I've made but didn't put up for sale!

And then lastly if you watch me already you can see these items too in the folder I've made in my gallery - ItsyCharms on Etsy

My prices are fair and affordable. Items are cute and handmade! Pop buy and pick something out! Share my pages around if you know someone / people who would like my items!

I've opened a shop on Etsy called ITSYCHARMS! Come check it out!

Here you can buy some of my charms I've made with Polymer Clay.

Cute little things like


(but not those runes, other Dovahzul runes. The ones shown are my name.)

And others. It's small right now, but I'll be adding more later, AND if you're interested in a specific Dovahzul written dragon shout you can click the Contact Shop Owner button on the side and send me a specific request! I'll then let you know what price to expect, and will contact you when it's ready in shop for you to purchase!

I was going through my photography folder in my gallery and I realized I may never have updated you guys on my sexuality / Gender Identity adventures.

For those of you who don't know; there was an interesting period of my life when I was very confused who I was. Something inside wasn't lining up and I felt very confused, conflicted, and alone. I am biologically female, but for a while I felt very much like my sex was incorrect. This identity I named "Erik". Erik stuck around for quite a while. The summer after I graduated high school I even cut my hair super short and looking into buying a binder to begin transitioning slowly into a male gender identity. (I'd always been boyish so my parents just figured I was being tomboyish again). I identified at this time as "two-spirit" (other times as FTMPreOp).

And then the strangest thing happened. I went to a gynecologist (lady-part doctor) and was diagnosed with PCOS (Poly-cystic Ovarian Syndrome). My ovaries don't work right resulting in extreme imbalances of hormones that creates all sorts of issues through out my body. I naturally create more androgen (male hormones) than I do estrogen (female hormones). I was placed on Metformin and oral contraceptives to control the hormones and stop the cysts from getting bigger. A few months after starting the pills to balance my hormones out I noticed I didn't really feel so masculine anymore. I felt more and more like a cis female and am no longer uncomfortable in my own body.

*This isn't to say that other persons who are transitioning are just hormone imbalanced and should be put on medicine to be binary normal, it's just what happened to me.

As to my sexuality; I came out in 8th grade as a bisexual. My mother told me it was just a phase that "everyone goes through, you'll be fine." ahaha, well mom you weren't wrong; it was a phase for myself I just didn't come out of it het like you thought. No, I'm a lesbian. (*I don't discredit bisexuality and believe it's a phase. My girlfriend is bisexual. But I do believe most of us go through a sort of bisexual phase where we are becoming aware of our sexualities, hetero or homo or what have you, and explore curiosities.)

To anyone who would ask "How do you know? Did you ever have sex with a guy?" Shut up. Shut. The. Hell. Up. Do you go around asking heterosexual people "Are you sure you're straight? Have you even tried to have sex with some one your own sex?" Bam. And anyway, yes. I have had sex with a guy. But that was long after I had accepted my sexuality as a lesbian. My choice to have sex with him was out of curiosity and to make it impossible for people to ask me that. Now I can look them dead in the eye and say "Yeah, but women are better."

So there's my update if you happen to go through  my gallery and find all the work that has my old alt. ego Erik hanging around or about my bisexuality. I'm a happy cissexual lesbian.

I've been a deviant now for 6 years, and while I'm not one of the 'celebrities' of deviantART I did manage to find my niche after 4 years in the digital art world as a stamp artist. It took many years to find, including a small period of time where I ignored deviantART for around a year because I became so discouraged by the better artists that I felt I could never be one of them. My art is terrible. Especially when I try to draw anime characters, which sadly is my favorite, but compared to others I am like a child just learning. And I suppose I am in a way.

 
To many the stamp artists are not much in the way of art. We work in the confines of a small rectangle that may or may not be animate, and may or may not contain a message of any relevance to anyone. Yet over the last 2 years exploring this small niche of deviantART I've found that being a stamp artist is just as expressional as any other medium.

Stamps are a way of quickly showing others who you are, what you like, where you stand. Many deviants have walls of stamps on their page so their visitors can quickly and easily learn quite a lot about the artist in mere seconds. With a few pixels or a compressed .gif file we work to make new stamps all the time to be sure everyone can be seen quickly.

The people of deviantART certainly have given me many chances to work on my skills. I work as a pixel stamper. As deviants ask for new stamps that relate to themselves I am challenged to express these ideas in pixel art. My favorite series being the phobia stamps where usually a deviant merely states their phobia in a comment of another one and I must run about learning about these new fears and trying to translate them effectively in a few seconds in pixel art. It's fantastic.

In the beginning, in the first year (or two, or four) of joining devaintART many artists may find themselves overwhelmed. "Where do I fit in? I'm no where near as good as this person. How do I get seen?" to which I did as well. I quickly learned that I am a terrible sketch artist compared to the other people on this site. Truly, too, I am not a great pixel artist compared to others, but what's great about deviantART is that it really doesn't matter if you're one of the masters or celebrities, although it must be nice, deviantART allows any one of any skill level to be seen.


Groups help I find. Being the owner of a group myself I rather enjoy seeing the art that people create to express themselves. Submit to groups and you'll find a niche that works well indeed. Worked well for me and I've been having stamper fun for 2 years now.