Wat een leuk idee!  

It's jewelry for green thumbs': Designer's business blossoms thanks to rings and necklaces that contain living plants

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 23:03 GMT, 13 January 2014 | UPDATED: 10:56 GMT, 14 January 2014

‘Jewelry for green thumbs’ is how Colleen Jordan, an Atlanta-based industrial designer, describes her 'wearable planter' creations.

The range of small 3-D printed vases allow you to cart a small flower, fern, or plant around in the form of a necklace, brooch, or even a bicycle embellishment.

The designs, are drip-proof to avoid soiling wearers' clothes and are priced between $22 and $45 on Etsy.

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Green thumb to-go: Colleen Jordan's wearable planters allow jewelry and gardening connoisseurs to fuse their two passions

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For every taste: Miss Jordan offers wearable planters in the shapes of rings, brooches, necklaces, and bicycle attachments

Offerings include rings, necklaces, bicycle attachments, and brooches that let ‘little plants live on your lapels’ [sic] - in a range of shapes and colors.

Miss Jordan, 26, advises shoppers to use the designs to grow tiny succulents or to hold a few fresh flower buds.

She founded the company in 2011 while studying industrial design at Georgia Tech.

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Riding dirty: Miss Jordan's bike designs allow cycling enthusiasts to install a mobile garden on their ride

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Etsy career: Wearable planters is Miss Jordan's full-time job and she has already sold nearly 2,000 through Etsy

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Green finger: Diamond-shaped rings let wearers tote around a bit of moss on their hand

‘I wasn’t really happy with my final project for school so started on my own side project,’ she told MailOnline of creating her company.

In just a few years’ time her wearable planters concept has ‘blossomed’ from an extra-curricular activity to a full-time career.

In less than three years she has made nearly 1,900 sales through Etsy, and also hawks her designs through her own website as well as Fabb.com. 

See how easy it is to build your Wearable Planter

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For buds: Miss Jordan advises shoppers to grow tiny succulents in the planters or to fill them with a few flower buds

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Little pitcher: While many of Miss Jordan's designs are geared towards women, she is currently trying to develop planters that would be appreciated by men as well

This spring, she’ll introduce wearable planters at four Urban Outfitters stores strewn across the country.

Currently, Miss Jordan is working to devise more masculine wearable planter designs that would be well-liked by men.

'Im just really excited when anyone likes them,' she said.

Een mooie steampunk animatie!

The incredible 200-year-old automaton: The jewel-studded clockwork caterpillar built to show off 19th Century high technology

• Caterpillar uses clockwork to mimic the motion of its real-life equivalent
• Made in Switzerland in 1820 for aristocratic Chinese buyers
• Sold two years ago at Sotheby's in Geneva for more than $415,000

By Damien Gayle

PUBLISHED: 10:18 GMT, 27 December 2012 | UPDATED: 11:30 GMT, 27 December 2012

We usually think of robots as an achievement of the modern era.

But this remarkable machine is proof that the resourceful inventors of the 19th Century had the technology to create their own automata.

Not only that, its remarkable gold and diamond-studded design shows they had the imagination to create them with far more style than our functional modern versions.

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Steampunk eat your heart out: This incredible jewel-studded caterpillar that shows how the robot makers of the 19th Century had far more style than those building the functional machines of today

Thought to date back as far as 1820, this incredible pre-electronic mechanical robot was made by Swiss watchmaker Henri Maillardet for sale to aristocratic Chinese buyers.

The rare gold, enamel, jewel and pearl-set automaton mimics the gracious undulating caterpillar's crawl with a clockwork powered mechanism which drives a pair of gilt-metal knurled wheels.

It was titled 'the Ethiopian caterpillar' when Maillardet, in partnership with legendary watchmaker Jaquet Droz, organized an exhibition to show off his menagerie of miniaturised automata in London, which dazzled the public.

According to Sotheby's, which handled the last sale of the caterpillar in 2010, it has also been referred to as the 'Vers de soie' - meaning 'silkworm' - and very likely may have been destined for the court of Qianlong.

Of Maillardet's caterpillar robots only six are known to exist and five are in prestigious collections in Europe, including one in the Patek Philippe museum and another two in the Sandoz collection.

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Clever: The rare gold, enamel, jewel and pearl-set automaton mimics the gracious undulating caterpillar's crawl with a clockwork powered mechanism which drives a pair of gilt-metal knurled wheels

Born 1745, Maillardet was a Swiss mechanician who worked in London producing clocks and other mechanisms, including various automata, including a famous set depicting magicians and others which could write in French and English.

The motions of these latter robots, which also drew pictures, were by a series of cams located on shafts in the base, with what is believed to be the largest cam-based memory of any automaton of the era.

When one was presented to Philadelphia's Franklin Institute in 1928 it was of unknown origin; but once restored to working order, the robot itself provided the answer by penning the words 'written by the automaton of Maillardet'.

The Ethiopian Caterpillar was sold at Sotheby's Geneva auction room in 2010 and was snapped up for $415,215 by an Asian buyer.

The auctioneers said in a statement: 'The body realistically designed to represent a caterpillar comprising eleven jointed ring segments, framed by seed pearls, and decorated with translucent red enamel over an engine-turned ground, studded overall with gold-set rubies, turquoise, emeralds,and diamonds.

'The underside is decorated with champlevé black enamel. When the automaton movement is engaged, the caterpillar crawls realistically, its body moving up and down simulating the undulations of a caterpillar by means of a set of gilt-metal knurled wheels.

'The automata work is composed of a barrel, cam and two leavers all working together to create the crawling motion.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2253631/The-incredible-200-year-old-automaton-The-jewel-studded-clockwork-caterpillar-built-19th-Century-high-technology.html#ixzz2uFOXG2NU
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