About Me... and Jewelry
As a five-year-old I wobbled in Mom's heels, applied her red lipstick and wrapped her fox stole around my neck. The partially toothless smile looking back at me in the mirror was a movie star! I remember thinking what's missing...a new hairdo maybe? The result was a vicious cowlick that hid itself in my bangs until cut to about an inch long. My bangs looked like a sun visor! They grew straight out! I finally gave up on trying to make both sides of my hair one length. She'd be after that one ear more often with those q-tips. I just knew it.
It wasn't until I adorned myself with all the glittery chains and rhinestone jewelry she kept in a small box on her dresser did the whole look come together. I was not only gorgeous, I became a master of disguise. The slight scissor mishap was hidden with a big earring in that newly exposed ear. Those glittery chains wrapped around the top of my head held down the bangs. Must have worked, too, because Mom told Jesus Christ to take a look at me.
Mom fueled my creativity with jewelry kits for birthdays and Christmas. The only tool needed, as I remember, was glue to set the "diamonds". But as I grew older, I wanted the real thing. Besides, I think that was airplane glue.
Many years later I took a community college course in beginning jewelry making. The basics of attaching a charm to an earwire (is that it?) and especially learning how to attach jump rings and closures for necklaces (where can I buy these?) was all I needed to get going. Since then I've taken numerous courses in glass bead making-- I was the only one in class with a near-death experience, bead weaving--never finished a project in the class, and mixed metals--nothing blew up and I finished everything with only a little bit of bleeding. There's always something new in materials or techniques that attracts my debit card like a glass bee bead to a glass flower bead. The more people create, the more creative they become.
I brake for bead shops!
