Land of Odds : Fifth Annual, 2007
The Ugly Necklace Contest
A Jewelry Design Competition With A Twist 
...GO VOTE...

Wearing Her Piece

Size 11 Czech seed beads: inside lined pink AB, white, cream AB, red AB, pink pearl, transparent purple. Pretty, pretty, pretty!

Size 11 Japanese seed beads: transparent orchic, frosted white, transparent red, gild lined lilac opal, transparent pink. How can the poor girl have such an ugly face when she is made with such care, insuch beautiful colors?

Japanese Delica beads: white pearl. Exquisite, especially with those black plastic cubes!

Japanese 4mm cube beads: frosted white and just one frosted black AB hiding from the dentist

Wooden 3mm rounds, pink and purple (so no surprising color choices there then).

Etched metal 18mm washers with the words 'happiness' and 'delight'; this is what she is constantly looking for, but with a face like that...

Two beautiful blue Indian glass round beads; all little girls want to have blue eyes.

Plasticized metal 16mm heart bead, used as a nose. No matter what she does, her nose is always shiny.

Nylon beading thread on which it all tenuously hangs together.

Black craft wire making her eyelashes -- she tried mascara to make herself beautiful but she's not very skilled at applying it and it only makes things worse. The same thing happened to the artist, many times.

Plastic alphabet beads: orange, pink, purple, white, blue, yellow. Pretty colors if you're about six years old. Spell out 'Sugar...Ah Honey Honey...U R my Candy Girl...' as in THAT song. She is saying AH for the dentist and hoping he won't notice her blackened tooth and the green bit stuck in her other teeth.

Plastic pony beads: black, white, pink, orange. She clings to childhood but longs to grow up.

Clay washer beads recycled froma child's old necklace: bright pink.

Transparent plastic beads: more pink and the occasional purple.

Plastic round bead: black. Blackheads, perhaps. Another teenage nightmare.

Plastic heart bead: bright yellow. The likely color of the insides of her arteries after eating all that fat and sugar.

Recycled and found buttons: assorted colors and sizes. The ones at the back have been moved progressively further and further along the band to lengthen it -- we've all done this with skirts and trousers too...some have cracked under the strain.

A pale blue candy bead picked up off the street. She has to have food with her at all times in case she gets hungry.

Two foam washers from packs of CD-ROMs, making two wide staring eyes trying to make sense of a confusing world.

Yellow plastic 'OK' seal from top of drink carton, also picked up off the street -- the drink was likely loaded with sugar and so, like Candy Girl, is not OK at all.

Cancer Research UK's iconic pink fundraiser ribbon, a grim reminder of every woman's worst fear. This diet can't be helping, either.

Aluminum tag from can of delicious, sugary, tooth-rotting carbonated drink.

Bit of green plastic that's got stuck between her teeth -- like spinach always does.

Beachcombed shell with lots of worm tubes and holes, another grim reminder of how we'll all end up.

Pretty hair ornament found discarded on sidewalk. Beauty doesn't last.

Clothing hanger size labels, increasing inexorably from M to XL...

...with two broken zippers fallen by the wayside.

And finally, a series of recycled 'charms' trapped between two layers of self-adhesive clear plastic sandwiched together with pink foam packaging and variously glued, beaded and stitched because the artist didn't have a laminator:

Assorted food words: 'Biscuits', '...sin and Chocolate' [was 'Raisin and Chocolate'; and it has a sort of little girly pink tail, maybe from a little girly pink she-devil], 'Sugary tRiP' {anagram of 'Party Rings', which are very sweet iced cookies, and a good description of Candy Girl's usual nutritional status], 'Flavours'.

On the reverse of the food words: net weights, and bits of nutritional information, off various packages of unhealthy sweet stuff. Like all failed dieters she is obsessed with the numbers.

Picture of a pink and yellow Party Ring [see above].

Pretty pictures of Barbie dressed as a fairy, the impossible ideal of girly prettiness that Candy Girl is trying -- and failing -- to achieve.

Clothing size labels tastefully trimmed with lace from a pair of panties: size matters, however much we would like to pretend otherwise!