Violet Hair and Mourning Jewelry

Hair Jewelry, MET

I have always liked the idea of keepsake hair jewelry and for some reason just don't find it creepy as many others do! Most often a type of mourning jewelry, those death obsessed Victorians kept locks of their deceased loved ones under glass or crystal as a lasting memento. In this tradition, I decided to make a lasting memento of my now gone purple hair! I have made the hard decision to become a brunette again and until I can go purple once more I wanted a way to commemorate my violet locks. So I decided to make a little mourning jewelry of my own, which sounds over dramatic! But I will miss having fun colored hair!

I found some cool neo-Victorian glass lockets at my local Michael's and a little lock of hair I kept from my last self-inflicted haircut.

I decided that for the backs of these lockets I wouldn't use just any pretty papers but cutouts from a museum program from my visit to The Wallace Collection (my favorite museum in London) 

The little pictures that came with the lockets served as my templates

The hardest part of this project was working with the hair! For the smaller of the two lockets I tried to glue the hair down to the little piece of paper which was difficult without everything turning into a mess. I eventually got it to lay semi parallel and flat but it wasn't easy! So for the second larger locket I decided to try something else and tied a little tiny lock of hair together with a yellow silk thread which was much easier! I am really happy with how these lockets came together and am happy to have a memento of my time with crazy hair!