I meant to do some advanced Christmas shopping. I really did. I booted up my laptop with so much holiday cheer you’d swear I smelled of pine needles and had snowflakes in my hair.

I truly had the utmost intention of finding lovely, unique trinkets for my family and girl friends. But then something happened. Maybe it’s that I got started on my Christmas shopping a little too early. Maybe it’s that I’m just a horribly selfish person who secretly covets anything that dangles or shimmers all for myself. Or maybe it’s that the gorgeous, gleaming, and glossy acrylic jewelry of Silvercocoon by Tia Salmela Keobounpheng was too much temptation for my tainted holiday spirit.

I shopped for myself and only myself. I’ll look forward to having nothing but coal in my Christmas stocking this year. That’s cool; I’ll console myself with my awesome new Pod earrings, and the glossy Stone Necklace, which should arrive in the next few days (squeeeee)! Bah humbug. Word! I mean, sorry.

If anyone has any jewelry websites that might give me some redemption, I’m listening.

I met Megan Stelzer, the designer of these necklaces, last summer at a dance-party show in Kittery, Maine, a few weeks before I moved to Los Angeles. I had just taken up metal-smithing and had a hawk eye out for cool pieces to inspire me; she was wearing the coolest key necklace I had ever seen. I made a beeline for her, gushed over all things metal and inspiring, and a full-blown girl crush on this incredible designer was born.

If there was anyone I would recommend you have a crush on, it would be Megan. Over the past few months, she and I have kept in touch over Facebook and I’ve only grown to like her more. Not only is she wildly creative, whip-smart, staggeringly funny, and brimming over with warmth and purpose–and a super-fun dancer to boot–she has an incredible, indescribable, openness about her. It’s no mistake then, that a woman whose door is left wide open to welcome you in specializes in creating gorgeous key necklaces, much like the one that drew me to her many months ago.

Megan will custom-make an order using any key you want; these would be a perfect present to a child who moves away, but whom you always want to know is welcome home, or to boyfriend or girlfriend who has earned the keys to your place. Or just for someone who has unlocked something in you that’s been stowed away for a long, long time.

The keys aren’t the only beautiful pieces of jewelry Megan makes. She has a whole Etsy site. Take a peek. Feel the crush.

Photos courtesy of Megan’s Etsy site. I do not own any of these necklaces, alas. Sigh.

My jewelry obsession has taken me far and wide on the world wide interwebs, but never have I been so swoonfully (not a word, but it should be) in love with a designer as I have with Freshy Fig. I hesitated to even write about her, since I don’t want all of her stuff to get scooped up before I can afford EVERY LAST FREAKING PIECE OF IT!

I do a little bit of metal-smithing and jewelry-making myself, so when I find a designer whose art I want to utterly and completely plagiarize, I know I’ve found a favorite. Oh, Freshy Fig, you complete me. You really do. Hello, Freshy Fig… It is you I’m looking for.

*Disclaimer: While I love all of these pieces I hesitated to post my very favorites so as not to draw attention to them before I have the scratch to buy them. Sorry… no I’m not.