Do you have Mutated Magpie Tendencies?

Because I do! Ever since I was young, I have been in love with sparkling, brightly colored objects. When I was 8, that love manifested itself as an obsession for those plastic rhinestones at craft stores. I would spend my allowance collecting them, then burying them in my backyard, the flimsy bark box in which I kept my collection doubling as a 'treasure chest'. (Miraculously, I was always able to find the spot where I buried them again.)

Later, around 10, I discovered faceted Czech glass beads, and they became my new love. I didn't know how to make jewelry but that didn't matter; I bought the beads anyway, eventually teaching myself to string  them on fabric thread (scavenged from my mother's intermittently-used sewing box) which inevitably broke. I would simply restring my beads and try not to mourn the lost ones.

Beads are good. Beads are easier to do things with than flat-backed rhinestones which must always be glued to something or require a special hard-to-find metal pronged setting, and so I now have a large collection of them, some glass, some gemstone. But I still have that little desire to have a 'gem' to carry around in my pocket, a talisman around which all manner of make-believe can be built--a rich lady, a fairy-tale thief, or young mage having stumbled upon anl object of power.

Well, at the Bead & Button show, I found a table full of faceted cubic zirconia stones in large sizes. Possessing super-sparkle and coming in lots of colors, it's the most popular diamond simulant in the world. I couldn't resist a brilliant yellow trillion-cut stone. Having read a LOT of fairy stories at a young age, I had fancies of making a necklace holding a diamond that had belonged to a maharajah. Upon getting home, I realized I had a gold filigree, the perfect size to wrap around the yellow 'diamond', and a length of classy gold chain to make a simple necklace--a return to the rhinestones of my childhood, but better!