You know the feeling… you’re going steadily along on a piece of art, everything is working out splendidly, you think “I’m such a badass” and then pow! You’ve instantly and unexpectedly destroyed your piece. You can cry, and believe me… it’s ok to cry… but after the tears, I believe you have a choice to make. You scrap it and move on, or you figure out how to make that jazz work anyway.
On this particular occasion, I had a very fancy, very expensive faceted tanzanite slice that I was just dying to make a tree of life pendant with. Apparently, I was channeling my inner Thor that day. As I was mid-way to completed, I applied a bit too much pressure on that delicate stone, and snapped it in half. I sat in disbelief for a moment or ten… and then my guts got all tied up and my chest got that sinking feeling. I wanted to be really sad, but the truth was, I was NOT going to let that stone go to waste.
I decided to do an experiment (Yay science!) At worst, it would fail and I would learn a few things. At best, I might just have something fantastic in the works. I electroformed around the perimeter of the broken stone, and antiqued that electroformed border to look earthy. Then I set about creating my tree of life pendant, accentuating the break in the stone rather than trying to hide it. The result astonished even me.
Out of the rubble of my mistake, I had one very unusual, very beautiful pendant that represented not only overcoming challenges, but also the pure beauty of what some might consider imperfections. A collector of my work saw this piece online, and immediately wanted to purchase it. She said it would not have spoken to her if the stone had been in tact. It was the fact that it was broken and made whole again, that moved her so much. I can now honestly say, I’m so glad I broke this stone.
