I Named My Heart Magick Bijoux After 18 Caribbean Islands

I just finished naming the 18 Heart Magick Bijoux that will be debuting in my new online boutique next week.

Each one is an original, one-of-kind, named after an island from the Lesser Antilles that I have visited.

This process has been very meaningful to my heart, and grounding too. I remembered how deeply I love the Caribbean, each island a world onto itself, with all these nations connected as one in spite of their different cultures and languages. 

I can feel how this influenced me as a little girl growing up in Guadeloupe, knowing that I had neighbors in islands I could see from my own home who didn't speak French but whom I still considered as relatives. We swam in the same turquoise sea and our ancestors had a shared recent history of oppression by Western Europeans. We also had in common a search for our true identity, grounded in our common heritage and rising into wildly creative individual expression.

From a purely artistic point of view, looking at the covers of a couple of books I flipped through to feel the Caribbean vibe before naming the pieces, I was powerfully reminded of how deeply I love the colors green and blue, in all their hues, together. Island and Ocean, forever present in my psyche, painting my inner landscape and coloring my creative choices.

The very first jewelry I created decades ago was when I lived in Guadeloupe, in the French West Indies, and it brings me great joy to pay homage to that magickal place on earth.