Becky

ME: "Bless me, Becky, for I have sinned. It has been two weeks since my last confession."

BECKY: "What happened this time?"

ME: "I don't know. I don't think I have a good excuse. When I do it, I always tell myself that it's not that bad. That I deserve it and I just can't help myself."

BECKY: "I know. Go on."

ME: "This time it was as if they were staring at me, calling my name. I couldn't leave them there. I think they needed me as much as I needed them."

BECKY: "How much?"

ME: "$79.99, but they used to be $164...that's like half off right?"

BECKY: "It's reasonable. What do they look like?"

ME: "Remember those orange leather wedges we saw with the braided straw heel?"

BECKY: "No way!?"

ME: "I know right? I just don't know if I can justify it."

BECKY: "Oh, orange goes with everything and once it stops raining, Summer will be right around the corner. I bet you they go really well with jeans."

ME: "They totally go with jeans. They also go with this halter dress I saw but I didn't get. I want to go back."

BECKY: "When?"

ME: "I don't know, what are you doing after work?"

(END SCENE)

Guilt is deeply seeded within my moral register. Thirteen + years (including Kindergarten and college) of Catholic school will do that. Which is why I find it poetic and somewhat entertaining that I confess my deepest darkest secrets to a runaway, coffee-drinking Mormon: Becky. She understands me. She doesn't judge me. I can freely confide in her when I blow through money earmarked for debt reduction on a pair of cognac-colored riding boots without being reprimanded. She will aid and abet me in ordering enough to reach the minimum spending requirement for free shipping when I purchase online. She will even allow me to ship packages to her house so certain individuals will be none the wiser to my clandestine activities. Some would say that she is enabling me in my addiction but I choose to look at it another way, that sometimes true friendship is defined by co-conspiracy. Someone needs to cover your back when the po-po's on your tail. Every girl needs someone who will be on her side when she's in the trenches, my someone is Becky.
This necklace is for Becky. A multi-faceted turquoise bead bridged across gold chain because she sees all my facets; bad, guilty, mischievous, insidious, and occasionally good.

J.R.

Shhhhh! I think I have a girl crush. I love everything about J.R. Firstly, she effortlessly plays this indie-rocker-chick vibe that is just insanely enchanting: ballet flats, skinny jeans, black eyeliner, and feathered headbands. Very fashionable and very trendy but the way she wears it, you would think the trend originated with her. Secondly, I've never seen a day when her hair was not perfect. Even when it's messy, it's fantastic. In fact, I think it's better when it's messy.Thirdly, she has done the impossible and made karaoke cool in my book with her side of a duet of the best rendition of Endless Love that I have ever heard. (No offense to Ms. Ross.) Fourthly, she's wicked smart and has intentions to change the world for the better. Last summer, she flew to France for an internship with the International Human Rights Council. She sent back super chic, black-and-white artsy pictures of her being very European like riding a bicycle through the streets of Strasbourg in a skirt. This list goes on but I think the most fascinating thing is that she is actually my friend. I don't even think she knows how star-struck I feel around her. I was afraid to tell her because I thought it might make things a bit awkward. For instance, there was this time we were up in the city celebrating when I went outside to get some relief from the hot party air and I saw her with a cigarette. I normally do not condone this type of behavior in other people but she was just so beautiful haloed in streetlight illuminated smoke, that I "bummed" a cancer-stick off another friend and started smoking too. She made a comment, while still complimentary, amounted to the effect that it was very strange that I should have a cigarette in my hand. Color me caught in the act! I shall never smoke again. These earrings are my abstract of J.R.'s smokey halo. Three gray glass teardrops ever so slightly prismatic that are angled on silver circles so they flitter in response to her motion. I gave them to J.R. for her birthday on her last night in San Francisco. She lives in New York now. *Sigh*

Katie

I'm sure you have an extraordinary aunt. Everyone does. I mean extraordinary in a many ways...but most of all because she offers something different to your life. Maybe she's an artist who spot welds and makes sculptures out of old mufflers. Maybe she collects porcelain dolls (which she names and displays in a special room in her doily-ridden home). My extraordinary aunt is extraordinary for many reasons. When I was little she sent me pictures of her children playing soccer in Guam and little mud dolls from Spain. She taught me how to make an angel food cake from scratch and how to fry pizza dough for the most amazing pizza ever. For my 9th birthday, she took my sister and I to the Happy Hollow Zoo followed by a shopping-spree at the Berryessa Flea Market. It was an adventure I will never forget and I still treasure the rhinestone necklace and earrings she insisted I couldn't live without. (I'll occasionally try them on and just as if I was 9 years-old again, they make me feel like a princess.) Somehow I always believed her when she told me I was beautiful even when I would otherwise be less convinced. She is magic. There's a little bit of magic in this offset silver poppy necklace with turquoise beads...something special, something different; just like your extraordinary auntie.

Jazmine

She is a high roller. She is luxury and she deserves it. She is the one who took me into Neiman Marcus on Union Square and walked in the place like it was her kitchen pantry (while I would normally be nervous and afraid I to leave fingerprints on the display tables). She also knows that good things come in an orange box. (If you don't know what that means, don't worry, I didn't either until I met her.) She is the only one I know that owns a Birkin bag. And while she demands luxury, she saturates the rest of the world with her generosity. To be her friend is to be bathed in the golden light that is Jazmine's giving heart. Those around her know this best of all especially if they have attended one of her ultra fabulous parties (nothing less than VIP treatment). While I am in that golden light, my confidence is miracuoulsly bolstered and doors seem just a bit more open. She calls it positive thinking, not being spoiled, a life lesson that is more valuable that anything that comes in an orange box. This was my gift to her. Pearls, of course, big ones (small pearls are inconceivable to Jazmine) on a gold chain with exactly '09 links.

Mabel

Mabel is the second eldest of my husband's four sisters. She is a consummate optimist and has the amazing ability to make something miraculous out of what ordinary people would call nothing. Two examples: 1.) When we were only at the dating stage, she asked my husband and I to be the godparents of her daughter. Usually you would ask a more confirmed couple for such a commitment but her rationale was, "They are going to get married anyway." We eventually did, of course. and 2.) There is a family portrait on my mother-in-law's wall, circa 1985, Mabel and her sisters have yellow daisies tucked behind each of their left ears. The story is that Mabel picked the flowers in the parking lot of the photography studio right before they walked in for their appointment. She made her sisters wear the parking-lot-daisies and the result of her efforts is the most endearing, precious family portrait ever.
Mabel had four children before her 30th birthday, which was a couple of days ago. These earrings are for her. I've had these purple square stones forever and I've been waiting for the right inspiration so that I could do something special with them. Wouldn't you know, it wasn't until I was trying to make something for Mabel's birthday that the clear glass beads and silver chains just fell into place, and they came out just perfect.

Karen

Karen is a striking natural woman. At a recent dinner party I noticed these green and silver earrings she was wearing. She told me that she got them at a farmer's market and I could instantly see her: fresh faced, maybe sunlight in her hair, returning a polite "thank you" to the fruit seller who gives her a sample of late summer peaches. At the end of the aisle, she has an artisan baguette in her cotton tote bag and perhaps a half dozen organic lady apples that she'll display on a white plate on her kitchen counter. She'll then pick up a pair of earrings, like these ceramic and silver beaded ones, and hold them between her fingers for a moment before she brushes her hair off one ear and measures their length along her neck in the hand mirror that hangs from the merchant's tent post. She appreciates their simple beauty; the slight luster of the antiqued silver and the color green, the same shades of green that surrounded her and filled her lungs on her last trip to Costa Rica. They are her last purchase at the market, she slips them on her naked lobes and turns the corner to make the rest of the walk home. Karen is a perfect Sunday afternoon.

Betty

It's the best show on TV right now. Seriously. I don't know if I tune in each week because of the captivating storylines or the fabulous historical fashions. I'm talking about Mad Men of course. And my favorite character on the show: Betty Draper played by 31 year old actress, January Jones. Her facade is so painfully perfect and impeccable that it's almost a relief that we are privileged to see any detectable flaws in her character. That's why I loved a resent episode entitled "Souvenir" (S3E8) where Betty accompanies Don on a business trip to Italy. While left to her own devices, Betty goes all out. She exchanges her "happy homemaker" coiffure for a haute-couture-Italian-do and wears a sophisticated mod black dress instead of her normal suburban pedal pushers and petticoat skirts. She speaks coquettish Italian as she sits in a outdoor cafe flirting with the ragazzi (until Don steps in to spoil the fun). She also wears these fabulous drop pearl earrings that I just had to recreate. Although here, I used turquoise (turquoise is the new pearl). I also tried to be poetic in my choice of turquoise bead to really caputre the essence of why I love Betty so much: the turquoise is flat (instead of a sphere) to represent how Betty and the women of her era are so often undersestimated. There are also cracks and fissures in the surface to represent how Betty's perfection is so tenuously held together...but more beautifuly fascinating becasue of this tension.