This one is personal. I’ve been wanting to write this for a while, and the timing finally feels right. If you’ve been following TechBinBytes, you know we make things — live shows, custom merch, laser-cut products. But there’s a whole backstory to why I do what I do, and it starts with a promise that was broken in North Carolina.
The Job That Wasn’t
Back in 2019, I was working for a company called PrecisionHawk flying drones. I’d moved all the way from Michigan to take the job. My boss — a military man — gave me his word that my position was secure. Six months later, I was laid off.
I’d uprooted my life, spent money I didn’t have to spare on relocation, and then found myself staring at the walls of an apartment I couldn’t afford in a state I didn’t want to be in. To make it worse, I had a sun allergy from a medication I was on at the time, which made the outdoor drone work painful. The whole thing was a mess.
But that layoff is the reason I’m sitting here today writing this blog post with a laser cutter humming in the next room.
Buying the Glowforge
After PrecisionHawk, I bought a Glowforge Pro. It wasn’t some big calculated business move — it was survival. I needed to figure out what was next, and making things with my hands had always been where I felt most in control. I started a small woodshop and began learning what the laser could do.
Then COVID hit. We moved back to Michigan. And we almost didn’t get to buy our house when we got there. That period was one of the hardest stretches of my life, and it was about to get harder.
Bankruptcy and Starting Over
I ended up in bankruptcy — through no fault of my own. That experience forced me to question a lot of things in my life and the people in it. I had to confront some family members about false pretense under the guise of law as a federal agent. It was ugly and it was painful, but it was necessary.
Coming out the other side of that, I had two things: a laser cutter and the kind of clarity that only comes from losing almost everything. I knew I wasn’t going to let anyone else’s broken promises or bad behavior determine my future.
Why Medical Marijuana Matters to Me
Before all of this, I drove a semi truck for nearly 15 years. Trucking was my career, and it wrecked my body. When the injuries caught up with me, I had a choice: narcotics or cannabis.
I chose cannabis.
Medical marijuana gave me relief without the fog, without the dependency, and without the side effects that come with opioids. Now that it’s fully legal in Michigan, I’m not just a user — I’m a vocal supporter. Cannabis changed the trajectory of my recovery, and I think it’s important to be honest about that.
The Fanatics Meeting Reignited Everything
If you read our earlier posts about pursuing a Fanatics license and building out a custom merch pipeline, you know we’ve been pushing hard on the production side. That meeting with Fanatics went well, and it lit a fire under me.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been lasering harder than I have in years. The Glowforge has been running almost nonstop, and I’ve been experimenting with a material I’m really excited about — metal composite sheets that engrave with incredible detail and contrast.
The Products: Metal Composite Badges and Coins
This is where all the threads come together. I’ve been designing and producing laser-engraved cannabis culture badges and coins on metal composite material. These aren’t stickers you print on an inkjet — they’re engraved into metal, and they look and feel like something you’d actually want to collect.
Here’s what I’ve been making:
Mary Jane Mane and Cozy Canna Curls
Two original characters. Mary Jane Mane is a wild-haired lion surrounded by cannabis leaves — available in silver and black finishes. Cozy Canna Curls is the gold variant, same character with a warmer tone. These are some of my favorite pieces because the detail in the engraving really pops on the brushed metal surface.
The Copper Coin
This one is the centerpiece. A large copper-finish coin featuring a character with a grinder — the engraving on this piece is deep and the contrast between the copper surface and the burned lines gives it an almost antique coin feel.
High-Score Howie
A kid zoned out in front of a TV with a game controller, surrounded by snacks and smoke. “GAME OVER” on the screen. This one is engraved on a black and silver composite and it’s probably the most detailed piece in the collection. Every pixel of that retro TV came through clean.
The Lighter Coin
A zippo-style lighter with a cannabis leaf in the flame — simple, iconic, and it works at any size. This design engraves well on the silver composite and makes a great standalone piece.
Graded Card Keychains
I also made miniature graded card slab keychains. If you’re in the trading card hobby, you know what a graded slab looks like. These are laser-engraved replicas on black acrylic with a clip — a fun crossover between card collecting and cannabis culture.
Introducing Nuggsco: A Marijuana Lifestyle Brand
I’ve owned the domain nuggsco.com for a while now. I originally had it set up to be a cat shop — and that was fine, but it never felt right. It was a placeholder for something I hadn’t figured out yet.
Now I have.
Nuggsco is becoming a marijuana lifestyle brand. Cannabis-themed art, laser-engraved metal products, apparel, and culture pieces — all designed and produced by me. I’m the sole female owner of both Cozyartz Media Group and Nuggsco, and this brand is built on my real experience with cannabis as medicine, not as a marketing gimmick.
What’s Next
I’m building out the full Nuggsco product line. More characters, more metal finishes, more products beyond badges and coins. I’m looking at coasters, display pieces, rolling tray inserts, and apparel with DTF prints of these designs.
These products are going to show up in our Whatnot live shows, on Nuggsco’s own storefront, and eventually through wholesale to smoke shops and dispensaries. The infrastructure is already in place — same Cloudflare edge stack that powers everything else I build.
This is the brand I was always supposed to make. It just took a layoff, a bankruptcy, and a whole lot of metal composite sheets to figure that out.
— Andrea