How it all started

Once upon a time...

I made two handflowers for myself because I wanted them. It was about 8 or 9 years ago. These are them:




I wore them every day, and still do. I became known as the girl with the cool bracelets. People liked them and said I should start making more and selling them. So I did.

I won't sell or duplicate these two though. I made them for myself from my personal style and theme: the "prism in the dark" theme (not Dark Side of the Moon, although I am a Pink Floyd fan). It comes from the sticker I have that says "the dark is afraid of me", and "ShadowCutter" was my sister's idea in a response to something I wrote in my personal blog. I like the way prisms cast little rainbows and how those rainbows show up best in the shadows, how they cut the shadows with little spots of colored light. And how it's like the rainbows are the shadows of the prisms because they're the result of light shining onto them. Bright shadows: an oxymoron that makes sense. So this is my theme.

I took these photos to try out my new lightbox which I made for my photography. I think it makes lovely photos.

I have no idea how long it took me to make the first one (the chains and prisms one), because I made it up as I went along and didn't record the time, and I kept making adjustments and additions long after it was "finished". And it can't be duplicated even if I wanted to, because the chains and prisms came from all over the place, mostly just random ones that I found here and there. Same goes for the second one originally (as far as the time), but when I decided to freshen it up with new rings (because I found better wire at another store), it took the time of Fellowship of the Ring plus most of Two Towers. Yes I'm a little bit of a fantasy/sci-fi geek. Or a classicist. That works too. But I worked on it while I was watching those at our annual New Year's Eve LOTR marathon, so that's how I measure the time. Of course I actually record the time for the pieces I make for sale. Hard to price them otherwise.

My actual first attempt at a handflower was done with fishing line and silvery clear seed beads. It didn't work very well but it looked potentially nice at least. After I tried wearing it for awhile I took it apart and made the chain one. I've gotten better at making them since then but I still like mine a lot. As far as I remember, I didn't really know about handflowers until I started wearing them and getting comments about them. I just decided I wanted silver over my hand.

The End.

well, not really...