I could not believe he was too stubborn to say "I love you" right before I boarded the plane that would fly across the Atlantic Ocean...
Elizabeth Gilbert began the story of her journey with the sentence "I wish Giovanni would kiss me." in the fabulous "Eat Pray Love."
If I were writing a book "Love Create & Go to Paris," Part I would begin with the line above (yes, there is a Part Deux...). Because it was my last thought on American soil.
And like her story, mine begins with a heroine who's a bit lost and sorting baggage -- it's hard to travel light... And like her journey, traveling thousands of miles can stimulate an inner journey as well, through terrain thats equally unfamiliar...
Once air-born, my thoughts turned to La Drogerie (a french bead store), Les Puces (the humongus, world-famous flea market), living like a parisian in an apartment in Monmarte with two women I only just met -- via the internet -- intermingled with watching the on-flight movie "The Blindside." The movie was so, well, moving, and I felt as though an emotion valve had been turned back on.
It was March of 2010 and I was running away to Paris. For two weeks anyway. I had fallen in love with Paris on my first trip in 2002. Just being there changes you. And at first sight, I was coo-coo-for-coco-puffs-crazy over the Eiffel Tower. How does one make huge steel look like filigree jewelry!? As a jewelry designer, it is the lighthouse that leads me home.
So I yearned for Paris' inspiring streets and to comb her flea markets for antique geegaws to use in my jewelry designs, and to return to my beloved tower. I also needed a break from my full-time job (which continually reeled from the repercussions of being swallowed whole by a large corporation), and a relationship made with equal parts of drama, big love, and hurt...
I designed jewelry in my "spare" time and aspired to reverse the time allocation of my two jobs. My pieces combine hand-beaded stones with cool antique components like antique jewelry, lace, leather, buttons, etc. to form one of a kind, timeless necklaces, cuffs and earrings. Having recently had my work published and sumptuously photographed in Belle Armoire Jewelry affirmed that I may be on the right path and helped me to muster the courage for this Paris adventure that I could neither afford, nor afford not to undertake.
