Rings 'N Things Project Playtime

This month’s Rings ‘N Things blog partner project was inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s classic tale “The Snow Queen.”

In the story, “An evil "troll,"…makes a magic mirror that has the power to distort the appearance of things reflected in it. It fails to reflect all the good and beautiful aspects of people and things while it magnifies all the bad and ugly aspects so that they look even worse than they really are.”*

The troll and his buddies “…then want to carry the mirror into heaven with the idea of making fools of the angels and God, but the higher they lift it, the more the mirror grins and shakes with delight. It shakes so much that it slips from their grasp and falls back to earth where it shatters into billions of pieces — some no larger than a grain of sand. These splinters are blown around and get into people's hearts and eyes, making their hearts frozen like blocks of ice and their eyes like the troll-mirror itself, only seeing the bad and ugly in people and things.”*

Eventually, a little boy named Kai is infected with some of the splinters of the mirror and this causes him to run away and become entrapped by the Snow Queen. His best friend, Gerda, goes in search of him.

After many adventures, “Gerda finds Kai engaged in the task that the Snow Queen gave him: he must use pieces of ice as components of a Chinese puzzle to form characters and words."*

When I was a child, I had a beautifully illustrated version of this story. As I looked through the Rings ‘N Things catalog to choose my materials, I came across the pages of Swarovski crystal pendants and some of the new and wonderful shapes. In looking at them, I had a sudden flash in my mind of one of the illustrations from the book. It was a picture of Kai sitting at the Snow Queen’s feet and holding large, jagged shards of ice.

I ordered a bunch of the Swarovski pendants that reminded me of those ice shapes and tried to put them together in what I thought might be a necklace for the Snow Queen. Or, maybe, these are some of the pieces of the evil mirror?

Originally, I had planned to use pendants in a Crystal AB shade, but they were a little too clear and bright. The Snow Queen is not Glinda the Good Witch. So, I switched to Crystal Silver Shadow and used some oxidized silver chain. I wanted it to have a bit of a “punk” edge to it. Sort of like the Snow Queen joins the new millenium.

And here are the results:





I promise you, though, that the Silver Shadow crystals do NOT look yellowy-brown like this in real life. I think it’s a combination of the background I chose and my poor photography skills.

They’re more of a dark silver shade in reality.






I mixed in some Montana Blue crystals to get that icy feeling – the way ice gets bluish looking, only darker.







I also used a bunch of prong bails from Rings ‘N Things to attach the crystal pendants to the chain. They are really awesome to work with and I love the look they give.

I like the result so much that I just ordered a bunch more of these in autumn/flame colors. After all, if there’s a Snow Queen, there has to be a Fire Queen, right?

KJ

*All quotes are from Wikipedia