Romantica

In the past few years, I have made a lot of necklaces.

A lot.

I have a deep love and feeling of giddiness for each and every one of them.

Despite that, I try, oh so very hard, to keep an emotional distance.

Sure, some sneak in, teasing me and taunting me and telling me to love them better than all the rest.

And those can be found hanging alongside the rest of my personal jewelry collection.

The temptresses.

And, sure, some of them I have a difficult relationship with.

Those that seem such a good idea at the time,

but then for some reason or other, just won't fit together right.

The challengers.

But it's all still love.

I can usually see how things will fit together while everything's still scattered...

sometimes when I'm not even there.

In dreams, the colors come to me, and I'm in the basement before the coffee's even brewed,

laying out the flowered pieces before the fog lifts and the dream is lost.

But this one.

Romantica.

Named after a song by the band Luna, because, oh, yes, she is so very, very Romantica.

She was not born like the rest, a vision from a dream or struck inspiration at a flea market when that last, perfect missing piece is stumbled upon.

No. She was born out of pure happenstance,

from a misfit collection of this and that.

One lone earring missing a pearl, the other, a rhinestone.

A broken clasp shaped like a leaf, and a cameo picked up on impulse.

I've always been a sucker for a cameo.

And, finally, this gold thing.

A starfish, maybe. Or a flower.

By itself, gaudy.

Probably just as gaudy with the wrong pieces surrounding it.

But here, it found it's place.

Fell in with  the right crowd.

A collection of what would ototherwise be junk. 

But here. Here.

It's all just perfect.

All of these weathered odds and ends bringing out the beauty in one another. 

Like Venice. Beauty in the decay.

It may be my most favroute thing I've ever made. 

Ever.

But I won't be keeping her.

She's bound for bigger things than the occasional jaunt out around my neck.

She needs to be shared, to be sent out into a wider world.

I'll be sad when she goes. But proud.

xo