Advice from a Dragonfly

Zoom in on your dreams.

For some reason, I have always loved dragonflies.  I can't explain it, but when I see something depicting one, I have to bring it home.  I have wrapped wire dragonflies on one bathroom wall and a dragonfly themed tooth brush holder in another, a candle holder and small plate in the kitchen, hooks for our car keys in the front hall.  My jewelry box holds a pair of earrings, three necklaces, a bracelet, and anklet.  There's a dragonfly on one of my t-shirts and a gorgeous pin on my winter coat (thanks Mom and Dad!).  There are more scattered about, but you get the picture.

Ironically, now that I'm making jewelry aimed at encouraging young girls to dream and succeed, I've finally looked up the symbolism of the dragonfly and found that it represents strength, self-realization, happiness, transformation, peace, harmony and living in the moment.  Basically everything I'm trying to teach my children and, by extension through my jewelry, every girl out there I can reach.

All of which boils down to the fact that I can now justify putting dragonflies on my jewelry.  Yay!

So I just got my fancy-schmancy new dragonfly stamp (thanks so much to The Urban Beader...they have an amazing selection of stamps and it was hard to control myself!).  Now I'm on a tear, stamping this bad boy everywhere I can.  Here are a few pieces in progress that will be hitting the Etsy shop soon.  Heck, I'm so in love with this thing I'm considering having an entire dragonfly-themed section in the shop.  What do you think?

I'm planning on a leather cord for at least one of them, maybe a crystal or pearl dangle on the "dream" one?  The other charm is convex so I doubt one would lay well against it but I can try.  And I have to say that the "Brave/Strong" one was designed by Big...she got hold of my design notebook one day and this is what I found -

I made a couple of changes, as you can see, but overall the idea was hers and I love it.  Could it be that I'm running a future mother/daughter business?  As long as we avoid glue sticks and/or trifold boards we should do just fine!

Happy Spring!  Today finally feels like it's really here (I'm ignoring the forecast for possible snow tomorrow into Monday!).  If you see a dragonfly, may it bring you peace, harmony and joy.