New Iridescent Flutter Earrings (and Facing Some Insecurity)!

 

I've been working with Kraft*Tex and iridescent films for awhile now with the DreamCuffs, but I've got ideas for other kinds of accessories as well.  

The past few weeks I've been working on some new earrings, and as usual, they surprised me!

I expected the cool color-shifting iridescent effect, but what I didn't anticipate is the way they move and reflect.  They are almost feather-light, and flutter in the breeze and as you move around - like shimmering aspen leaves!  

And as they are fluttering, they are casting sun-dappled reflections (the iridescent film shows on both the front and the back sides), as well as looking transparent from certain angles, creating a stained glass effect - flashing and glowing and generally creating an effect more magical than I'd ever hoped!

 

These earrings are also helping me face my insecurity about photos of myself.  

I am, as many of us are, quite self-conscious about this kind of thing.  I'm plump, I'm pushing 43 years of age, my hair is thin and fine and the gray has been creeping in for years, the wrinkles are starting to appear, the dark circles are chronic and hereditary. I'm no supermodel!

I know intellectually, and truly in my heart, that I am beautiful as I am (double chins, nascent wrinkles and gray hairs and all!), and that I don't have to be a supermodel to be beautiful.  

But when it comes to my business, I want to present my products well, and having professionally photographed, pretty girls modelling your fashions is apparently how successful designers present their work.  But paying for a pro photographer and having to arrange for a younger, thinner, hotter friend to model would require more patience (and $) than I possess when in a creative frenzy.  

My demand for instant gratification is overcoming my insecurity!  Whoo-hoo!

To be honest, I'm pretty put off by a lot of the fashion world, and how people are presented.  I don't really want to perpetuate the impossible, sometimes outright deceitful beauty standards that have been dominating.  My definition of beauty is WAY bigger than that.  I find beauty in people of all types!

So I've been modelling the earrings myself, and at first I cringed, having to look at so many images of my own face.  All I could see were the flaws. I DID manage to refrain from doing any Photoshopping beyond some cropping and general color correction.  In the first set, I didn't even put on any makeup, since I don't generally wear it unless I'm going "Out".

The more I faced these images, the more it sank in that I don't look half bad.  Good lighting, head position and camera angle can do wonders! And when I posted the pics, friends commented on how great I looked in the pictures.  So perhaps my pathetic, body dysmorphic, hyper-critical, b.s. Self Image is losing it's grip.

They liked the earrings, too.  :)

Check out my available selection at my Etsy Shop!:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/cristinamcallister?ref=hdr_shop_menu