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By Amber, on June 10, 2010, at 10:00 pm Like my Lolë dress, one item that’s been getting a lot of wear lately is this buckled cuff that I picked up from Editors’ Closet:
It looks black, but it’s a very dark purple. It’s by Seattle designer Tara Sauvage. She’s been around awhile, designing accessories for other companies, but now she has her own line. Rocco e Dante is named after her two pugs, who help with the inspiration and modeling.
Her bracelets are fun, with the tough-girl, rock ‘n’ roll styling that I’m a sucker for — I had a hard time choosing between this and the zipper cuff. Maybe next time her line comes to Editors’ Closet I’ll pick up the other!
By Amber, on May 30, 2010, at 10:00 pm With my big vacation for the year fast approaching, I did a little shopping. If you recall, I was in the mood for a stack of gold bangles. These were exactly what I had in mind, but the $100 price tag was not working for me:
 Amrita Singh is having a big Memorial Day sale (50% off any order) and I have a sizeable reward credit left over from their winter holiday promotion, but I was pretty sure I could get the look without using $50 of my credit. I headed over to Harwin Street this weekend and paid about $12 for these:
 Not bad, eh? Maybe they’re not quite as pretty, but they’re cute enough for me! If any of them get broken or bent during my travels, I won’t be mentally calculating the loss. I love a good deal!
I haven’t resolved the gold flip-flops issue. It seems like all the pairs I like the most have terrible reviews on Zappos. My sister says Havaianas are worth the price, but I’m still thinking. I used to have rubber flip-flops in a rainbow of colors, but hours of Stacy & Clinton convinced me it was time to start wearing real shoes when I’m not at the beach, and I got rid of almost all of them — so now I wear leather flip-flops around town all summer, instead. I like to tell myself they’re slightly more respectable. :)
By Amber, on March 30, 2010, at 10:16 pm I can’t help but love octopuses. Octopi. Whichever you prefer. It’s hard not to be fascinated by such a strange, smart, tough creature, and it seems a lot of people are fans (check out some of Miss Monster’s popular tentacle stuff!).
Here are a few little octopus baubles that have caught my eye:
 available from billyblue22 on etsy
 available from OctopusMe on etsy
 available from westernmountain on etsy
Finally, one I’ve admired for four or five years:
 available from Seawear
Yep, I’m a sucker for octopuses.
By Amber, on March 18, 2010, at 9:58 pm When my sister and I get a really good deal on something, we like to tease our husbands about how much money we saved them. Sort of like when you get such a good coupon that you’d be losing money if you didn’t buy something with it. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean.
Mark and I recently planned our big vacation for the year — we are going to Hawaii for a week and a half! I am so excited that I quickly commenced with the fantasy-shopping of swimsuits and such, and came across something at Bluefly that I actually needed — a pretty new cover-up, at an irresistible price:
 As soon as I placed my order, I started mentally accessorizing. First order of business, a stack of gold bangles:
Those are actually exactly what I had in mind, but way more than I care to spend. I am thinking more along the lines of Harwin St. prices — I think I’ll need to make a trip over there soon! And then, obviously, I will need some practical but appropriately pretty flip-flops:
 I was thinking about a wide-brimmed hat, but I don’t think the kind I like would pack easily, so maybe just a scarf to tame my mane, like so:
 I already have my favorite sunglasses ever. I bought them over five years ago and liked them so much that I ordered two spares from Italy. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I am already on one of the spares and love them as much as I ever did. I will buy them again one day if I have to. Sometimes you just know.
Next up, I need the perfect beach playlist for my ipod. Any suggestions?
By Amber, on March 9, 2010, at 10:00 pm This photo is brought to you by my near-inability to take a photo of my own right arm:
 Just another Billion Dollar Babes find. It was a little bit of an impulse buy, but it is currently one of my favorite bracelets. I don’t typically wear a lot of gold, but I’ll wear it just to go with this. I had a little moment of panic when it first arrived because it seemed a bit short, but I did just a little gentle stretching and now it fits fine.
I really like Leila’s stuff — it’s a little bit girly and a little bit rock ‘n’ roll. You can check it out here, but I’d strongly advise searching for a deal or waiting until it comes back to BDB, because that is way more than I paid.
By Amber, on February 25, 2010, at 10:00 pm Actually, the website calls it ‘BIZARRE vintage jewel Egyptian SCARAB bracelet’:
 The stone is glass, thought to be Czech, and the piece is estimated to be from the 1920s or 1930s. The scarab is a symbol of good luck, though I’m not sure how lucky you are when your occupation is pushing a poo ball across the desert. Regardless, I would rock this one-of-a-kind piece so hard.
‘BIZARRE’? Nay, I think you meant ‘AWESOME.’
By Amber, on February 2, 2010, at 9:32 pm A couple days after my sister and I tore up Harwin St., we went for round two in the Heights. I got a couple hot tips from Taryn over at A Peine For Your Thoughts, and our first stop was Oolala. I love supporting local and independent artists, and Oolala has a fun selection of jewelry and clothing at very reasonable prices. So reasonable that I had to check the tag on this set a couple times to be sure:
 (Black seed bead and capsule bead necklace with matching earrings)
We also checked out Hello Lucky on Taryn’s recommendation. It reminded me of Parts & Labour in Austin, but a teeny fraction of the size. Nothing we needed this time, but fun to look!
Next we headed to the Historic Heights shopping district, which is a couple blocks of antique stores, thrift stores, and boutiques. We eventually wandered into Retropolis, which is kind of a black hole of old stuff, 90% of it being (IMHO) either crap, or utter crap (partial jars of pomades from the 60s: as nasty as they sound!). I don’t do a lot of thrift shopping because you really need patience to find the good stuff, but this time I scored with a few yards of fun fabric:
It has GLITTER!
You’re probably thinking this means I will sew something. I do make things, which I will show you when I (one day) have a craft table again, but none of those things are clothes. I asked my mother to teach me to sew when I was much younger, and I hated it because there is just way too much stuff to do before the actual sewing. Once in a while I convince myself that I want to learn to sew, but I’m pretty sure I’d rather just be the idea person, so I texted my mother and let her know I had a project for her! She and my dad are a little busy trying to sell their house so they can move to Texas, but as soon as they get settled here, I am hiring her for all the little bespoke dresses she can handle.
Because I’m all about buying local. :)
By Amber, on January 31, 2010, at 10:07 pm My sister kindly let me photograph a couple special items that she brought with her to Houston:
That bracelet that belonged to our grandmother. ’Skip’ was her nickname. She wore it often, but I had never noticed the little flowers on the links. I really love hefty ID bracelets (like this one, this one, this one — what am I, a biker?) and Grandma’s bracelet has a nice balance of heft and femininity.
My sister wears this piece every day:
Formerly our grandmother’s wedding set, now my sister’s. Probably someday my sister’s grandchild’s wedding set!
By Amber, on January 26, 2010, at 10:00 pm Most people know that ‘SoHo‘ refers to a shopping mecca in New York City. It’s a haven for fun accessories and clothing at reasonable price points (also available at unreasonable price points, if that’s your thing). One weekend during my last year in New Jersey, I took the train up to meet my sister and we shopped the heck out of SoHo’s accessory stores. We each went home loaded up with cute, inexpensive jewelry and street pashminas (the acrylic imitation pashminas sold in every color by street vendors on every corner).
Since I moved to Texas, I had heard tales of a similar shopping mecca right here in Houston, on Harwin St. With my sister in town, I finally had the accomplice I needed, and off we went. We spent an enormous amount of time at the very first shopping center we tried and emerged victorious.
Nothing you can buy here is amazing quality, but that’s not why you go. This is fashion fast food. You go because you need just the right jewelry and clutch to go with tonight’s outfit, and you don’t care if they’re painted with lead and made out of plastic.
We cleaned up for ourselves and picked up a few gifts. The following combined haul set us back about $75, no haggling:
As I told my sister, although I love Houston, I used to be a little sad that I could no longer hop a train and shop SoHo. But now I can drive there, it’s climate-controlled, and the prices are even better. Have I died and gone to heaven?
By Amber, on January 19, 2010, at 9:57 pm A small collection of pendants that belonged to my grandmother:
Lately I wear this one the most:
 Jade with ruby and opal
I wear this one when my outfit just needs a little something:
 1945 two-peso piece with rope chain, front and back
I think this one is quirky and it always makes me smile. I wore it when we went to a Valentine’s Day taping of the Martha Stewart Show:
 Cupid pendant with rubies and emerald
This probably came from one of her many trips to Mexico:
 Silver fish
This next one is interesting. It’s an Amita, or Komai, damascene piece. Damascene jewelry is made by embedding wire or metal shapes into a piece of non-precious metal (iron or steel), which is then blackened by oxidation. Amita is a Japanese company that dates back to 1947, but the process has been around for centuries and (from what I gather) was referred to as ‘Komai’ when it was used to decorate Samurai swords. A lot of damascene jewelry is now made in Spain. You can see a little step-by-step guide here. I would love to know the age and story behind this pendant:
 Japanese damascene pendant, front and back with ‘Amita’ stamp
I’ve saved the best for last. My grandmother had a few pieces of jewelry that I think of as iconic to her legacy, and hopefully I will be able to share pictures of some of those pieces soon, but they are distributed throughout the family. I ended up with this one, which I seldom wear, but I remember my grandmother wearing it often and I keep it in a place where I see it every day:
 Mazatlan pendant
Thanks for looking!
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