Quelle Surprise: Color Me Scrappy

 Blue Bubble Necklace

 Pretty Prism Barrettes

Top: Marshalls

Skirt: Amazon

Shoes: Chase & Chloe, Zulily

Bag: Luv Betsey, Macy's

Belt: Izod, Marshalls

A rainbow is like a surprise gift from nature. Which is an odd thing for me to say, because I don't usually like surprises. Or nature. Nevertheless, last weekend, I read a novel called Surprise Me. Title notwithstanding, I knew what I was getting into because it's written by Sophie Kinsella, beloved author of the Shopaholic series. It's about a married couple that starts freaking out after some health insurance company-appointed doctor assess their life expectancy (I guess that's a thing in England) and informs them that they have a good chance of living until 100. Although Dan and Sylvie (those are their names) are in love and all that, umpteen more years of finishing each other's sentences seems suddenly daunting. So, Sylvie comes up with a grand plan to keep the spark going with little surprises. The story starts out sweet and light-hearted, shimmering with the kind of nervous energy that is the hallmark of any Kinsella caper. Then things take a turn, plunging Dan and Sylvie into uncharted territory and invoking the old caveat: be careful what you wish for.

The topsy-turvy plot serves as a wake-up call for Sylvie. Although she's a mother of two and holds down a job, she comes off as a little naive, trapped in an arrested development symbolized by waist-length hair and aggressively frilly clothes (which is something, by the way, that I appreciate only as a metaphor; stylistically speaking, I would never side with pixie cuts and pants suits). Sylvie needs more than a makeover, though. She must confront a painful secret before she can move on with her marriage. Some may say that this is too tangled a tangent for a book with a yellow cover splashed with pastel hearts. But I say that this is Kinsella's wheelhouse, sprinkling the spangly over the unspeakable. (Rebecca Bloomwood shopped, after all, to deal with all the little and not-so-little disappointments in life.) That's what makes Kinsella's books so good; like a well-dressed department store mannequin, they're fun and fashionable but have lots of layers.

Now, on to that rainbow. Rainbow rhinestone hairpins, that is. Rainbows, come to think of it, are a lot like Kinsella novels, in that they're masters at making the best of things that are unpleasant. The unpleasant thing, in their case, being rain. Anyway, I used metal slider barrettes to make this hair flare, and I like the way it turned out, flashy yet simple. Talk about an oxymoron!

Next I worked with the metal circle charms left over from last week's Ariel necklace. Sometimes that's the best part of buying supplies for "planned" projects, using the "scraps" to make something that never even occurred to you. I embellished them with cool-colored rhinestones to make this Blue Bubble Charm necklace. The purple, chartreuse, and turquoise remind me of a colorblocked silk blouse that my mom had in the '90s and that I once wore, tucked into chino shorts, on a ferry. (I have a picture, and it is not good.) But the mod-slash-under-the-sea aesthetic of that color palette stayed with me, and I was excited to recreate it in this necklace. It's a little slice of nostalgia, the pot of bold at the end of the rainbow.

Unlike the poison ivy that surprised me many summers ago on yet another, albeit non-ferry-related, vacation. Not a good slice of nostalgia, that.

I have my reasons for not liking nature.