As soon as I saw the Faerybeads Carrying A Child Under Your Heart bead, I knew that I wanted it. I had been following their designs for a few months, trying to decide whether to take the plunge and on which bead, but when I saw the design for that one I knew it would be my first. They originally offered sneak peaks of it last June, but it wasn’t released until October, so I had plenty of time to think about it and determine how I wanted to use it.
The baby is beautifully detailed and the opposing side, as you might be able to tell from the name, is a heart. My original plan was to have it with the baby facing out, but once it arrived I quickly found out that it’s weighted so that the heart usually faces out. Another thing that can be (and that I should have) surmised from the name ;) After my initial disappointment that I wouldn’t be able to style it as I had envisioned, I realized I prefer it this way, with the tiny baby nestled safely in behind the heart.
Although I’ve had it for a few months now, it has only had one or two outings, which is unfortunate and not entirely its fault. The main reason that it hasn’t been used much is really just that I got caught up with Christmas and didn’t get a chance to play much with it to find a combination that I like. The second reason is that the few times that I did attempt a combination, I wasn’t happy with how it hung on my bracelet. The irregular shape of it means standard glass beads don’t snuggle up next to it on the pointy end of the heart, so I think it really needs a small bead – like a pearl or very tiny glass – on that end and I don’t have either. If you wear your beads more loosely on your bracelet it probably wouldn’t bother you, but I don’t like much movement on mine. The good thing is that it is lovely enough to hold its own on a wrap bracelet, and I really should wear it more often like that, but the only wrap bracelet that I have is the thin fuchsia one shown and I don’t have many outfits in that colour scheme.
One thing to note is that most of the Faerybead offerings have a smaller hole that fit chains the size of Trollbeads, but this particular one has a larger hole and will very easily fit onto a larger chain such as Pandora. Maybe I will need to check out the lovely Story wrap bracelets at some point to see if it would fit on one of them ;)