DIY Monologue: Jewelry with a story

Karboojeh handmade leather boho hoop bracelet

I believe that when you make handmade jewelry (or anything handmade, including food), you put a little bit of you in each piece (recipe, dish, artwork, creation, etc). Making beaded or leather jewelry is more than just fitting colors and shapes together; it is a little journal where we write our life’s untold story – using jewelry components instead of words and ink!

I very recently noticed that when I am making a piece of jewelry or accessory, I am mostly reminiscing over a particular time in my life.

The boho leather bracelet above (sold) is just an example of this. Although the design is quite basic, it did take me quite a while to garner enough courage to make this one: It meant I had to re-live part of my adolescence, since such a bracelet would have been a hit in my teenage years.

After gazing at the ingredients (metallic hoop, leather cord, caps, clasp, jump-rings, beads, eye-pin/findings) I had arranged neatly in a box for almost two months, I decided I was ready to make jewelry that appealed to me back when I was a kido-turning-into–woman.

Adolescence is emotionally painful. Up until mid-twenties, one is virtually walking into all kinds of walls, hurting over so much as we grow up, especially if we have the artist streak, making us more vulnerable to life than most of our peers.

I sold this bracelet to a 40-something lady at a local craft fair who was looking for something to buy for her daughter. She impersonated her kid every time she looked at a jewelry item, and vocalized out-loud what she imagined her kid would criticize about it.

“Oh, no, this one has shells on it… my kid would say: ‘Mom, why did you bring me shells, don’t you know I hate them? I look like a board game of Barjees!*”

The mother sighed and continued…

“She’ll stop talking with me for a week!”

Obviously, that’s a difficult child. Like many of us.

The mother’s features relaxed when she saw this boho bracelet:

“Ah, she’ll love this one!”

Her kid is a 13-year-old girl. When I made this bracelet, I was thinking of my jewelry-taste (and life) back when I was 13.

Moral of the story: Any work of art, or artisanal work, that is made with a story behind it, will find a place to continue telling that story!

Cheers,

Karboojeh

DIY Tip: I used E600 to glue the caps on the leather-cord ends.

* Barjees is a board-game known in the Levant, specifically in Syria & Turkey. Instead of dice, cowrie shells are traditionally used so contenders would move their metallic pegs a certain number of blocks towards their target, the final house of win. The numbers are pronounced in old Turkish, and that’s how every one plays them.