For the Bride

Please forgive this bad photo. White/crystal AB/pearl jewelry is hard to photograph, especially when you're in a hurry and have poor lighting. I'll be borrowing this necklace back from the bride sometime after the wedding to take high-quality images to show off.

When I showed my friend Helen the O. Bersten necklace in Rachel Nelson-Smith's Seed Bead Fusion, we both agreed that it was the perfect design to go with her wedding dress. Besides the white wedding color scheme, I made a few small changes to the design. Rachel used 5mmish freshwater pearls, and a single pearl dangle from the bottom of the pendant. I used 4mm Swarovski pearls, and decided to do 3 dangles, since the pearls were so small. Her original design had the necklace attached to the pendant at two points, but I decided to do a wire-wrapped bail on mine so I could hide the crimps in the back. Her design used two colors of drops to embellish the bezel, and I just used one, because it was all I had that matched the color scheme ;)

The O. Bersten component is fun to make. It's really dimensional and I can see a lot of opportunity for color variety... but I don't recommend doing it in various shade of pinks, otherwise the floral base will look like a little ring of boobies. Just saying...

Saw Avatar Today

Chris and I went out to see Avatar today. We decided to catch a 3D showing, and although a lot of people were at the theater to see Sherlock Holmes, our screening was pretty full, too.

The movie is beautiful, with lots of interesting plants and creatures, many of which glow with eye-popping phosphorescent hues, making every night time scene resemble Mother Nature's biggest rave party. I can definitely see why they made a tie-in video game, because the world is just dying to be explored, what with the wide branches, giant leaves, and floating mountains... actually, at times, it honestly felt like I was watching a video game.

Aside from the marvelous graphics, I found it to be entertaining but not amazing. Even at almost 3 hours long the movie had to jump around a lot in time to fit in everything it wanted to, and at times my mind had to scramble to fill in the blanks. I think it might have worked better as a two-part movie, a la Kill Bill, as it would have allowed more time for character development and backstory.

The action sequences were really intense, and while there's not really any gore, a lot of people and creatures die very violent deaths. This, combined with more exposed native boobs than a year's worth of National Geographic means that this is really not a kid's movie, no matter what McDonald's seems to think. It's a shame, because I think kids would really love the super-colorful and imaginative world of Pandora*, but might be scared by the big battles (my personal feeling is that the boobs won't harm their delicate little psyches, but I'm not big on anti-boob-stigma). It would be nice if in addition to the video game and Happy Meal Toys, they had made a kiddie movie to go with the adult movie.

But really, when you strip away the amazing graphics, the alien world, and the machine-gun laden ships, this is Fern Gully for adults, and the heavy-handed message and black-and-white moral view point is what kept me from being truly in love with it.

*Seriously, enough with the name Pandora, guys. Go mine Greek mythology for some new planet names. I'm sure Borderlands and Avatar aren't the only ones to use it, just the only ones I've encountered. This year.