PEP Badges - In Real Life

I am curious if the idea of creating physical badges of PEP has crossed the minds of those in charge of such decisions!

I really love the idea of metal casted / enamel pins.

They are relatively cheap when ordered in bulk.

They are extremely popular with the younger folk - it might be a neat way to garner attention from others outside of Permies / Permaculture.

I could see them being utilized on backpacks, hats, on coats, shirts, or overalls.

Perhaps have stock of them, and when a person who has earned a badge - could pay the price to have it shipped to them. ( $1.00 per pin + S+H = $5 - $10 ?? )

A person could wait until they had a decent number of badges to 'cash in' on, and even there could be a trade in program for when one upgrades from Air to Sand to Wood, etc.
(Paying S+H, but not the initial pin fee.)

Perhaps might be better to just have a list of ' Pin Pickers ' or some other catchy name, like the waiting list of sorts ( A person pays $30 or other amount up front to be in the Pin Program).
They then are essentially paying forward for the cost of each of the 22 PEP badges, and then just need to pay the S+H fee whenever they choose to 'cash in'.
This would allow a person to either spend more money for their current badges - or save money by waiting until they have a saavy collection.

Could even do a free trade for upgrades or skip the S+H when they come to WL for SKIP events, if the pins were stored there.

The Pin Program could help jumpstart the initial cost of the pin runs -- and also add teeny tiny extra incentive for in person events at WL.

I'd be happy to help with further coordinating on this project - it would be relatively simple to create the pins, have a stock, and have a list, and send out orders - especially if there was a seperate thread (other than this one) if it became an official program.

I will unabashedly admit, I personally really want a tiny shiny badge that my friends will ask me about , 'What is that?! How did you get that?!' -
and I can explain I earned it by foraging and brewing tea from clovers. 🍵🌿


(** All prices/numbers are estimates. )

We've thought of it but didn't get very far.  I was thinking that having a BB in woodworking, metalworking and textiles for "Make a PEP badge and send it to someone" would be cool but it didn't get much traction.

Your idea is much better and could be run outside of Wheaton Labs (since they're too busy to think straight).  Heck, you could even do the whole thing remotely and sell the badges/pins on the digital marketplace at permies.  

It would be cool if they had a QR code built into them or if they mentioned permies.com/SKIP on them somewhere so people who are curious could get more info.

Oh, and bumper stickers!  

We could get you the images from the badges if you wanted to use them.  Or the Bernal Brothers (who are illustrating the SKIP book) have circular badge versions that may also be a good option.

I'd be willing to experiment with this idea !

Maybe start off small, to find a place that has good quality of pins (already have a few companies in mind).

If I could get access to the rectangular images - that would be ideal! I think they would collect well together , since they can line up so neatly.

Let me know how we could move forward with that! (:

Bumper Stickers are also an interesting idea - I'd probably focus on just pins for now though!

Here's all the images! I snagged them from this thread. Sadly, they are low-resolution. Paul wanted a small pixel size, so I used the little blue bumpersticker icons and modified them (and added a few other images) to make the badge images. They might look fine on tiny things....but would need help to look good on something larger.

I think the Bernal Brothers have higher-quality badge images for the SKIP book....but they don't look like these at all, and--as far as I can tell--aren't colorized to match the sand/straw/wood/iron color schemes.

dimensional lumber woodworking

round wood woodworking

natural building

Food Prep and Preservation

foraging

gardening

textiles  

rocket  

tool care---

Metalworking --

animal care

electricity (including solar)  

woodland care

community living

commerce

earthworks  

greywater and willow feeders

plumbing and hot water -

nest --  

natural medicine -

homesteading

oddball --

Badge Bit

PEP

Ah wow thank you for the organized badge list Nicole! You rock!

I'll see what I can come up with on moving forward with this project.

I think you're right that, when blown up, those images will be very blurred and pixelated. This might not be awful - I've seen Minecraft style badges that are deliberately pixelated to match the game style.

Not everyone is interested in having such 'real' badges. I am happy with the images here below my posts.

Stitches are the original pixels. I think most tapestries are probably less than 20dpi . . .So high res images wouldn’t be necessary.

From a perspective of getting eyeballs and awareness and traction for PEP SKIP I think it's a clever idea.

Personally though I'm with Inge, I'm happy with my forum badges. I mostly only go to the trouble of getting the badges to show other forum members what I spend my time and effort doing within the permie world.

I love the idea of a physical badge! I don't know anything about enamel work, but I have a 3d printer and I would be 100% down with printing and shipping badges at cost if someone were to make a 3d model of each badge. Or if there were higher quality images made I could print Linthophanes!

I would like to see this idea revisited! I am trying to get a local homeschool group to adopt the SKIP program, and I really think physical badges would be helpful motivation. Maybe a rubber stamp of ink on wooden coins? That way I can easily make them in bulk, but with fairly permie-friendly materials

Even cooler would be wooden coins with the design branded/burnt into them. Maybe a metal-working Permie could sell these for wood-level badges?

Well, it might be a character flaw of mine, but I also want a physical badge. On a freaking sash!
Who could coordinate with me?

I think a fabric badge makes sense for the sand badge. It takes relatively little resources.

If I do an air badge, it will be colored with a sharpie on a circle shaped soda can metal, a big part of the PEA metalworking badge.

I would love a wooden badge for higher levels. Possibly a metal one for iron level badges.

Anyone here familiar with working with pewter? I would really like an easily cast-able pin for the BB# designation. I would happily pay someone to cast:
BB5
BB10
BB20
BB60
BB80
BB100
PEP1
AND PEP2 in half-dollar sized pins that go through a shirt.

I'm ready to sort this out now, because I plan to start SKIP scouts after spring sports, in May.

Rebekah Harmon wrote:Well, it might be a character flaw of mine, but I also want a physical badge. On a freaking sash!
Who could coordinate with me?

I share this flaw/feature! These would be rad. Now I'm thinking how to create them.

Rebekah Harmon wrote:I'm ready to sort this out now, because I plan to start SKIP scouts after spring sports, in May.

I love that you're doing this and that 'skip scouts' is a thing. Keep it up!

My default thought is embroidered cloth patches, like the scout badges you show. But I don't know how to make those! Custom ordering could be a thing. Same with enamelled pins.

But if I'm trying to make them, as I think on it more, about a 1" x 2" patch could work, if made of...
- Air badges could be a pencil drawing of the badge design on paper. Insubntantial, yes, but not nothing. Just like the air badge.
- Sand badge could be the badge design on clay? Fired or not? I know precious little about pottery.
- Wood badge seems like a no-brainer for the design burned into wood.
- Iron badge seems like a stamp into a piece of thin flat metal.

Of couse, this doesn't solve the question of affixing them to clothes...

Ash Jackson wrote:- Air badges could be a pencil drawing of the badge design on paper. Insubntantial, yes, but not nothing. Just like the air badge.
- Sand badge could be the badge design on clay? Fired or not? I know precious little about pottery.

Further thoughts:
Air badges would be paper with a light blue drawing.
Sand badges would be graphite pencil and paper
Straw badges would be the oven-cured oven-safe clay.

BB## badges would be paper. PEP1 and PEP 2 would be clay. All of those would be slightly larger than 1"x2".

I imagine these have a hole in the top through which one could run string, as for a necklace, or thread to affix to clothes like a giant peppy sequin.

All would have a qr code on the back leading to https://permies.com/wiki/skip-pep-bb

Would any other badge-positive people like myself buy physical badges? Maybe $3 each for paper badges + (albeit nominal) shipping?

Straw, wood, and iron would be more, for materials cost.