Bunny Charms Support Local Rabbit Rescue

This winter, Kalla Designs is teaming up with the fine folks at the Magic Happens Rabbit Rescue to make your holiday season just a little bit more charming! 

We collaborated with the rescue's director to create these sweet little charm bracelets and charm anklets, featuring a hand-painted winter white bunny charm suspended from a sparkling silver chain.

Magic Happens Rabbit Rescue is a non-kill rescue that shelters, provides medical attention for, and re-houses bunnies and other small animals that have been neglected or abandoned into new loving homes. 

We first found MHRR  on a quest to find our 8 year old boy bunny Bling Bling a new mate. Rabbits are highly social animals and need at least one playmate in order to be truly happy, but that doesn't mean they'll take to just any other bunny. On the contrary - they are both intelligent and surprisingly selective when it comes to finding a mate. The folks at MHRR understand that, and they found us just the right little girl bunny to cheer up our lonely boy.. Pumpkin was a small, pumpkin-colored (hence the name) girl bun who had been so badly mistreated by her previous owners that by the time she arrived at the shelter that she was severely underweight and malnourished. Fortunately, if there's one thing we know how to do, it's fatten up a bunny! So we brought Pumpkin (a.k.a. Punky) home with us last spring in the hopes that Blingy would still like her when we got home, and, well, see for yourself.

 

Bunny Love 

 

We are so grateful to the wonderful folks at Magic Happens Rabbit Rescue that we wanted to do something to thank them for their amazing dedication to these small, fuzzy critters who may be virtually helpless in this big bad world, but nevertheless manage to bring giant-sized joy into our homes and hearts. So we decided to create a special piece of jewelry to help MHRR raise the funds they need to continue doing such great work. The result is what you see here: a winter white bunny charm suspended on a sparkling silver chain as either a bracelet or an anklet.

So if the spirit moves you this season, or you love bunnies, or you just want a new charm for your favorite charm bracelet, you can purchase your Winter Bunny Charm Bracelet or Winter Bunny Charm Anklet from us at Kalla Designs, or directly from the folks at Magic Happens Rabbit Rescue. Either way, over 50% of the purchase price of $10.00 will be donated directly to the rescue, and that's good news for everybunny!

Don't forget, they make great stocking stuffers, hostess gifts, and party favors too!

Fabulous Fan Fotos

Thank you to Kalla Women Jan and Diane for sharing photos of their newest KALLA DESIGNS pieces! You can upload your own fan photos on our Facebook page. We love to see how you wear yours!

Jan is showing off her golden earring threads - tiny chains that actually thread through the piercing, allowing the chains to drop delicately from both sides of the earlobe. Gold is a popular material for these ear threads because it flatters every skin tone, and is gentle on sensitive piercings. On Jan, these earrings draw the eye to her gorgeous soft blond hair color and peachy complexion.

 
These ear threads are available in gold or silver, and can be customized with gemstones or charms at your request.

Below, Diane is wearing our popular "Wish Set" of hand-crafted gold earrings and pendant with deep blue freshwater pearls. I think the way she wears them draws attention to her lovely long neck and big blue eyes! We call this the "Wish Set" because the original design was created for a fundraising auction for the Make-A-Wish Foundation of the Texas Gulf Coast and Louisiana - but the set got so much attention that we decided to add this design to our permanent Heirloom Collection.

Thank you lovely ladies for sharing your photos with us!

Wage Support for the Gulf Coast - Find Your Own WIN-WIN

It is not an easy time to be a New Orleanian. 

It seems that every time we manage to get one catastrophe under control, another one pops up to take its place. Our city lost roughly half of its residents after Hurricane Katrina, including but not limited to our police force, and so you can imagine the ensuing chaos and the years it has taken to try to bring it back under control. Now, with many New Orleanians finally finding ways to travel that long "road home," we find ourselves in the frustrating position of having to deal with a catastrophic oil leak that has shut down our beaches and once-fertile fishing grounds, and begun to put long-cherished local and family-owned businesses out of business. Our world-renowned seafood restaurants are under threat, along with the tourism trade that leads our local economy.


So what's a New Orleanian to do? We could all stand around bickering about politics and arguing about where to point fingers of blame - and some of us are doing just that. Lord knows, that seems to be about all our politicians are managing to do these days, money in the freezer aside. But I get the feeling right now that there's plenty of blame to go around, so arguing over who gets what percentage of that blame is ultimately a waste of our time. The courts will spend the next howevermany years parsing that blame out, and ultimately the only people to get rich off of the whole process will be the defense attorneys anyway. That's just the American way.


We could gather together in candlelight vigils and try to "raise awareness" of the catastrophe in the Gulf, but really, who's not aware already? Some people care deeply about the issue, some don't, and the chances of our bringing the nonchalant over to our side are, as ever, slim to none.


Some New Orleanians are banding together in a noble, if not particularly fruitful, attempt to organize volunteer groups to clean beaches, scrub birds, and plant new marshes, and I'd be the last person to try to dissuade those people from accomplishing whatever they can accomplish. But what with BP refusing to allow anyone but their own employees near oiled areas and volunteers being referred by local news organizations to a 1-866 number that (surprise!) turns out to be a voice mail account in BP's public relations office, the sad fact is that the well-meaning are simply not welcome in the areas that need their attention the most, and it takes more resources and energy than the weekend warrior can muster to break through the wall of bouncers and spin doctor press that BP has built around its little private nightmare.


So we're back to square one. What's a New Orleanian to do in this time of confusion and frustration? We could take it all out on each other...I'm sure there are plenty of gangs/politicians who would relish the opportunity to fan the flames of discord and violence in pursuit of their own enrichment. But in the end, we'd be right back where we started after Katrina ...in a city with a devastated economy and little ability to police itself.


The problem with all of the above options is that, one way or another, in order for one side to accomplish its goals, someone on the other side has to lose. Be it the government, the environment, the wildlife, or the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, the fact is that when we focus more attention on blame than on rehabilitation, someone must be sacrificed in order for progress to be made. And right now, the Gulf Coast simply can not afford to go around making enemies. This area needs all the help it can get, and alienating our government, BP officials, or the general public can only do more harm than good at this point.


Which leaves us in a tricky postition. But when all options seem like bad options, it's time to start asking different questions. Now more than ever, the Gulf Coast needs its people to come up with win-win scenarios. But none of us in the general public, however much we might wish to ride in on white horses and save the day, has the individual capacity to clean up this mess, either literally or figuratively. So what can we do?

New Orleans needs a new framework from which it can address problems of this nature. Instead of asking "Who is at fault?" or "Who should we sacrifice?" we need to start asking ourselves, "What can I do? How can I, using the resources that are readily available to me, make a difference right now? How can I help to create a win-win scenario?" Because none of us can do everything, but every single one of us can do something.  

And after all, there is so much that needs to be done, it hardly matters what issue you can find the energy to tackle. Can you spend an hour this weekend learning about a local shelter? Can you shop at a local market instead of a large corporate one this weekend? Can you afford to donate a few bucks to an agency working to clean up the environment?

As Americans, most of us enjoy the privilege of living our daily lives without having to interact directly with our society's social issues, such as crime, poverty, homelessness, etc. We know they exist, but we shut them out because they overwhelm us, and it is easier and more pleasant to simply ignore them. But as New Orleanians, we cannot afford to be socially isolated right now. We need to offer support - in whatever form - to our city and our neighbors. No one is asking you to don a wet suit and swim into the middle of oil infested waters. But how about if you put down that franchise hamburger and seek out a restaurant that is still serving local seafood? Could you fill your car with gas from some station that's not owned by BP?

Right now, our city and our way of life is under attack - not by any single terrorist organization but by the bad luck of having several major disasters within a few short years. Now is the time for us to turn off that auto-pilot that usually runs our busy lives, and to live consciously and deliberately. We need to be aware of our impact on our own society, however small it may be, and make choices that will support our local economy and environment. We need to come together as New Orleanians... or the "terrorists" will surely win.


For myself, I have re-dedicated Kalla Designs' goal of supporting local non-profit agencies by donation. We're off to a good start with the recent success of the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Texas and the Gulf Coast's most recent fundraising auction, in which two sets of our jewelry raised over $600 from bidders to support the Foundation's goal of granting wishes to children who have life-threatening medical conditions. But one small success must lead to another, hopefully even larger, success. Will you join us in our effort to support the Gulf Coast today? There is only one qualification to join us in our campaign...you must care enough to try.

Featured Design - Open Roman Collar in Gold and Glass

Featured Design:

Open Roman Collar in gold and glass

The center of this collar necklace is open, for more than one reason.

In ancient Roman society, jewelry was used as a means for wealthier citizens to showcase their assets - both financial and physical. But like many things, such jewelry could be a blessing or a burden, depending on how it was used. 

We know from archaeological research that jewelry made from fine materials like gold and gemstones was often worn by both men and women as a display of wealth and status - but slaves were sometimes afforded jewelry as well. Such jewelry was used to enhance a slave's appearance, making the slave seem more attractive and therefore worth more money. It was also worn by slaves show that slave owners could not only afford jewelry for themselves, but could also afford to adorn their slaves with precious and beautiful items.

However, not all Roman jewelry was meant to enhance attractiveness or display wealth. Researchers believe that roughly 20-30% of the people living in ancient Rome were enslaved by wealthier, free citizens. However, slavery at that time was based on conquest rather than race; most slaves had either been part of a village or area that was conquered during a military campaign, or were born into slavery by such parents. Because slavery was not necessarily based on skin color or race, it was more difficult for citizens to distinguish between a slave and a free Roman citizen. To set their slaves apart, wealthy owners often had a collar forged of iron, bronze, or other strong metals around the slave's neck without any clasp, in order to prevent the slave from ever removing the collar against the owner's will. Such collars could be inscribed with words explaining that the slave was "property" of a wealthier, free owner, and sometimes even offered a reward if the slave were to be returned to that owner. For example, one such inscription on an ancient slave collar displayed in a Roman museum, once translated, reads:

I have run away. Catch me. If you take me back to my master Zoninus, you will be rewarded.

To Roman slaves, such jewelry was more of a curse than an adornment. It prevented the slave from running away and starting a new life of freedom. 

As fashion will do, fashion trends of the time became associated with the larger culture of ancient Roman society, and eventually the Romans established a fashion of wearing similarly tight necklaces (also called collars)  with an obvious break in the center of the piece, or else with a large and obvious clasp. The break or clasp in the collar was likely worn in front rather than behind the neck, to show that the wearer could remove the collar any time s/he pleased, thus displaying to the world that the wearer was a free person, and not anyone's slave. These "free collars" could be made from similar metals, or - if the wearer could afford it - made from gold and gems, as we see in costumes of the period.

Kalla Designs Interpretation:

We took the concept of the "free collar" from past to present to create this Open Roman Collar, a necklace that both acknowledges the history of Western culture and represents the beauty of our freedom today.

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A delicate ring of golden wire encircles the neck, and is capped on each end with large turquoise and saffron colored blown glass beads. Genuine freshwater pearls, dyed a soft amber color, add detail to the open front of the necklace.

To see more or purchase your own "freedom collar" click HERE.

Want to see more costumes and stories about ancient Rome? I recommend Rome, Spartacus, Spartacus: Blood and Sand

A Beautiful Rebellion

Fashion designer Tala Raassi literally suffered for her art.

In the May issue of Marie Claire magazine, a young designer named Tala Raassi relates her nightmarish tale of being arrested in Iran for wearing "indecent" clothing (a miniskirt) to a private party celebrating her sweet 16th birthday. The teenager was held in handcuffs for 5 days, repeatedly threatened, and ultimately received her sentence - 40 lashes from a wet whip ("to make the lashes sting").

There's a memory that has defined my life: I'm standing in line in a long, dark hallway, handcuffed to a friend, while listening to the horrifying sound of two other friends screaming out in pain. I'm in jail in Iran's capital, Tehran, and I'm about to be served my punishment: 40 lashes. My friends emerge from a room down the hall, tears streaming down their faces and blood staining the backs of their shirts. I can barely breathe as I wait for the guards to call my name. Finally, it's my turn. My friend and I, still cuffed, enter the torture room together...

What's truly amazing about this story, aside from what the Western mind can see as nothing but senseless brutality, is what Raassi did after she was released. Born into a well-to-do family, Raassi had planned to attend law school one day. But the torture she endured changed the course of her life. She began to consider a career which would allow her to take a stand against the brutality and oppression of women she experienced so personally. She moved to the U.S. (where she was born and is therefore a dual citizen) and entered the world of women's fashion. Today Raassi is the owner of the internationally acclaimed Dar Be Dar fashion line - a line of super-sexy swimwear. As she so eloquently puts it, "A woman who cares about herself is not afraid to celebrate the beauty of her own body."


At the risk of comparing myself to the incomparable, I confess that a part of me can empathize with Raassi's experience of the impossible situation. Even here in the United States, women are daily faced with such paradoxes of will -  be socially acceptable and maintain your peaceful existence, or else be true to your own genuine will and learn that, at the very least, you will not often be loved for it. On a much smaller scale, my own entry into the world of design resulted from a similar realization. Having spent the lion's share of my of my adult life as a career social worker, I once believed in the ideals that trap so many with their overly-simplified promises of the ultimately "Just World Theory" - the belief that, essentially, everything ultimately happens with just cause, and it all evens out in the end. After all, if Raassi had just worn pants, she wouldn't have been lashed, right?


As such, I dedicated not just my time but my very soul to the social service system, believing that it was this system that ultimately provided justice (usually in the form of meeting basic essential needs) to those poor souls who had somehow slipped between the cracks of a just world. A family of four is homeless? Send them to a shelter. A child is doing drugs? Send him to drug diversion classes. A woman is ill and uninsured? Send her to social security disability. I had an answer for everything. But the longer I worked in the system, the larger the cracks seemed to be. 3 million Americans are homeless. 1 out of every 10 teenagers in the U.S. uses illicit drugs. Over 46 million Americans lack health insurance. Eventually I became so overwhelmed by the unmet needs of so many people that I ceased to be able to separate myself from my work.


Ultimately, my body rebelled from the combination of overwork and exposure to so much disease (remember, those who are uninsured are much more likely to catch and spread contagious illnesses, and I worked with uninsured clients every day). Every system in my body began to break down. I couldn't fight off even minor infections, I was always exhausted, and my days became a blur of physical pain and mental frustration. I lost my job when I requested a reduction in hours, and so of course I lost my insurance soon after. Suddenly, I was the poor soul without insurance being referred to social security disability. I knew from working with clients that this was not an ideal system, but I was soon to learn just how broken it really was. Over the next five years - while fighting for my life - I was denied over and over, racked up enormous medical debt, and worst of all for me, was treated like a pariah by the larger society. While celebrating one July 4th - a good day for me - I was able to get out of bed and sit on my front lawn with my neighbors to watch the fireworks. But the evening was overcast, and all we could see was a vague blush of oranges and blues in the fog while fireworks exploded unseen over the water. As we were commenting on the cost of the largely invisible display, one neighbor tuned to me and said with all sincerity, "Well, at least they didn't waste it on welfare moms."


That moment was my true education, the moment I realized that I had been towing the party line for a society that considered helping young, impoverished mothers (and their children) afford food and shelter to be less valuable than fireworks that nobody could see. I discovered the hard way that we - you and I - are "those poor souls;" that it is but for the grace of God or sheer dumb luck any of us manages to avoid the same sad fate.


I imagine that Tala Raassi might have had a similar realization, if entirely more immediate and terrifying, while waiting for her turn to be tortured in that hallway; that rather than embrace the beauty and joy of their own youngsters joining together to celebrate life, her society would prefer to whip them into brutalized submission just because they could. She must have felt she had an impossible choice to make - maintain her society's standards and therefore reinforce its brutal oppression, or leave her home to create an entirely new life for herself without any assurance of support or success. When it comes down to it, Raassi's decision took her unforgivable tragedy and transformed it into beauty - not just in her designs, but the beauty of a strong, empowered woman who shaped her own better world from pieces of a painful past. Her story is an inspiration for women (and the men who love them) of every society.

Katy Perry's Dress's Clock Is Ticking

Katy Perry's Dress's Clock Is Ticking

Katy Perry and Her Egg-celent Dress

If I could only read one snarky website, it would hands down be GoFugYourself, because I'm a firm believer that we learn best by making mistakes...and also I love schadenfreude. Take for example Katy Perry's frock at some ASCAP event. On top it just looks like grey and neon pink polka dots, which seems kinda' fitting for Perry's aesthetic, but follow on down the waterfall of ova and realize that she spent the entire evening wading through a cloud of tiny little eggs just WAITING to be fertilized and grow into - apparently - neon pink chickens. I feel that dress's pain.

In The Beginning...

...There was a small family in New Orleans - just one of many in the days after Hurricane Katrina - looking for a new path, a new community, a new life. Looking, in fact, for what has come to be known here as "Rebirth." This family moved to the city about 6 months after the hurricane in the hopes of helping to breathe new life into a community in desperate need, which is fitting because it was a desperate move. To say that we weren't getting along very well would be an understatement. Words like "divorce" were bandied about almost casually, and we had little hope of our situation improving soon on any front. There was no trash removal. Mail delivery was inconsistent at best. The apartment building we moved into had a partially fallen-in roof, and vines climbing up the south side of the building twined their way into window spaces with no windows remaining, through cracks in the ceiling and holes in the walls and floorboards. Air conditioning? Ha ha ha ha ha! Outside the building, the rest of the city was largely and eerily silent. Felled trees still blocked many roads, and potholes that hadn't been repaired in years became pot-ponds. Our family had left Los Angeles and entered a new life in surroundings more reminiscent of a third world country than a thriving American port city.


When people asked us, "Why would you want to move there?" I was never sure how to answer them. In truth, the answer probably depended on the moment the question was asked. Sometimes I replied that we were shocked by the lack of government aid provided to the city running the nation's third largest port, and we wanted to help revitalize its economy. Sometimes I replied that my husband, who had lived here previously (I had only visited twice), always wanted to return to the Big Easy. Sometimes I just replied that Los Angeles had become too expensive, and never really sat right with us anyway. I never said "I don't," but sometimes I thought it.


Several years later, I realize that I had never known how to respond to such a question because I hadn't yet met the answer. The answer laid with the cab driver who drove us around the city when we had only one day to find and rent an apartment, and then gave us his cell phone number in case we needed anything after we moved in. It laid with the teller at the local bank who helped me to open an account, despite the fact that I had neither the correct paperwork nor much of anything to deposit. It laid with the guys who delivered our furniture (up three stories of a rotting-out winding staircase in the kind of humidity that even drowns mosquitoes) and then refused to accept a tip or delivery fee, saying instead "Thank you for coming here. You won't regret it." It laid with the restaurant owner who offered a job sight unseen. Today, when people ask me why we moved to New Orleans, the answer is easy. We moved here for a lot of reasons - some noble, some sketchy, some extremely ill considered. But we stayed for only one reason: We stayed for the people.


New Orleans is a community unlike any other in the U.S.  European architecture, Southern food and hospitality, thriving artist boroughs, live music endeavors, and warm sunshine and flowers are all wonderful perks...but the sense of neighborhood, of community, of a shared history and -what's better - a shared future; the NEED to celebrate life under even the most dire circumstances...that's what New Orleans is all about.


Four years after we moved here to New Orleans nearly as shell-shocked as the residents who lived through the storm, our city's Saints played for the title of National Champions.  Having recently settled into a new home with a kind of family stability I had never before known, I was seeking a kind of "rebirth" for my own career.  With a master's degree in social work, I had always assumed that one way or another I would be a career social worker. Unfortunately (or perhaps serendipitously) an illness prevented me from finding regular work in the city. I had fallen into the trap of sitting around and feeling sorry for myself, when - in a turn of the tables so unlikely that I should have seen it coming - New Orleans once again swept through my taciturn life, set me upright, and gave me a good swift kick in the rump. I'd been saying offhand for years that I wanted to start a jewelry company, the way most people say they're going to write the Great American Novel. Needing to make a few extra bucks, I made another impetuous, foolhardy, poorly considered decision. I emptied the checking account which I should never have been able to open in the first place to buy up an armload of black and gold beads, and I started making bracelets.


To this day I don't know how I got the gumption to walk into that first boutique with absolutely nothing to recommend me and say "Hey, want to buy some jewelry? It's black an gold!" For that I can only credit the New Orleans Saints, because I knew one thing with absolute certainty - the Saints were going to win the Superbowl. It was inevitable. I could see clearly that the same hurricane of destiny and emotion that brought my family to New Orleans and forced us to pull together come hell or (literally) high water was sweeping through the Superdome. In reality, I suppose they could have lost, and I could have been an armload's worth of black and gold beads the poorer. But the thought honestly never crossed my mind. All I could think was "How many bracelets/earrings/necklaces can I make in the next two weeks?"


So I did walk into that boutique (thank you Fleurty Girl!) and I did sell the jewelry. I like to think it was my delightful design aesthetic that moved it, but frankly it would have had to be poisonous not to sell...shops couldn't keep anything black and gold on the shelves. I left about 10 items the first day, and got a call the next day for 5 more, and 5 more the day after, and so it went.


Who do I credit with the birth of what has since become a family design business? I suppose I could take the credit myself, or credit the boutique (which certainly deserves at least a hearty thanks and the right of first refusal forever onward), or even the New Orleans Saints, because they had as much to do with my success as I did, if not more. But in reality, I think I have to credit the people of New Orleans, including my family, because I know something now that I didn't know four years ago. I know that this city would have bought up every piece of black and gold memorabilia on the shelves even if the Superbowl had gone the other way... because this is New Orleans, and we support our own.


And that's the story of the beginning of Kalla Designs.