Jewelry will forever hold a sentimental part of my soul. Both of my grandmothers always had and wore a mixture of timeless and fun statement jewelry.

When both of them passed, I got to choose a few pieces for myself. One of which was a favorite ring that I lost in the ocean in Puerto Rico. I went body surfing and took a little tumble. And when I came up my finger was there and the ring was nowhere to be found.

A few things have changed since inheriting some of their statement jewelry. For one, my style has changed, and with it, my jewelry taste. Secondly, Nathanael and I wildly downsized our belongings when we decided to travel the world in 2018.

So between 507 days of world travel, moving in and out of my mothers house, and having travels cut short by the ‘rona, and turning around to buy land + build a house…

…it has come time to revisit the idea of my jewelry game.

On this last round of travels (Jan 2020 to April 2020) I brought one pair of gold hoops, and two watches. On our first round I brought necklaces and some different rings as well, but I attempted to bring less on the second trip. And to be honest, quite a bit of my jewelry got tarnished during our first year so I just said “screw it” the second time.

I broke one of my hoops a few weeks ago and then lost the gem out of my ring that my sister got me in France. To be fair I’ve worn the ring every day for the past seven years and it proved to be very durable up until it wasn’t. Those two happenings lead to me decided that if we were going to be home for an extended period of time, I would like to invest in some *hopefully* timeless pieces of jewelry.

It was important to me that this jewelry would last and be multi use. I truly do enjoy wearing the same jewelry every day or making minor changes. This is where my love for hoop earrings started. You can dress them up or dress them down. I can wear them with a skintight black dress and heels, jeans and a boyfriend T-shirt, or straight up sweats. That’s my kind of jewelry.

I asked my Instagram following for female owned companies, and THEY DELIVERED. A girl went looking for hoops and ended up with this:

Breakdown + Links of the Jewelry:

Sarah Briggs:

Sheila Thin Wire Cage Ear Cuff ($15)

Erika Thin Wire Hoop Large ($30)

I went with these due to specifically being marketed as LIGHT WEIGHT/WEIGHTLESS – OBX “Workout hoop” was the runner up.

Buy 2 get 1 Chains: (instead of Beads by Tara Rio Chain)

Cole Necklace 16 & 18in Gold ($41 & $46)

Baby Kravitz 16in Gold ($37)

Uncommon James:

Peek-a-boo earrings gold ($29 final sale)

14-15in Whitby Necklace ($58)

Illusion Ear Jacket ($52)

Kendra Scott:

22-30 in Adjustable Gold Chain Necklace ($40)

Silpada:

Metallic mix ring ($50 but $40 with sale)

MakePie:

18in Show more grace curved bar necklace gold filled ($41.50)

…

Straight up this was not a cheap jewelry haul, but it was also not nearly as expensive as it could’ve been. I went to plenty of sites, and spent almost 2 days building out this jewelry suite. I researched chain links and combinations, companies that support women who sweat, the durability of said items. You better believe I had 12 tabs open at one point in an attempt to find the perfect mix at a reasonable price for the high quality of these items.

So yes, you could probably go to Forever 21 or H&M and get similar looking items, but I was pretty set on high quality, female owned, and items that would last me for years to come if being worn on a daily basis.

Context matters. And I wouldn’t of paid these prices a few years ago. But I can now, so I enjoy doing so. Even still, I ended up getting three chains during a sale from Sarah Briggs that were going to cost me the same as one chain from Beads by Tara. I loved the chain from Beads by Tara as well, but it was simply more cost effective to get three chains that I could mix and match from Sarah Briggs.

Here are all of the companies that were given to me that I personally enjoyed. I was impressed by many of them, but just didn’t make a purchase because they didn’t have exactly what I was looking for.

• OBX
• Made by Mary
• Balleen (Seattle based)
• Hello Adorn
• Beads by Tara

Perhaps my two days of jewelry research will make your life a bit easier if you are also in the market for a jewelry re-up or even a single piece.

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