CityState: Current l Edited by Jamie Coelho
Everlasting Blooms
Gina Caramadre’s eternal jewelry line is wearable art made
from preserved flowers. By Julie Tremaine
PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF ETERNAL.
It all started with a gift of love. On
Valentine’s Day 2018, Gina Caramadre’s
boyfriend gifted her a bouquet of red roses.
“It was the most beautiful bouquet I’d ever
seen,” she says. “The petals were like velvet.
I immediately thought, how can I preserve
these flowers?”
That’s how she learned to turn blooms
into “flower clay” that can be molded into
beads, then cured and made into jewelry.
From that bouquet, Caramadre created a
mala necklace, used in meditation, that she
wears nearly every day. “I wanted a mala
because to me it represented our love, but
also how grounded I felt in our relationship
and in my life,” she says. “It’s a tool to
encourage peace in your body and your
mind. The necklace wasn’t just about our
relationship, but about self-love.”
People started asking if she could turn
their flowers into jewelry, too. Now, Eternal
takes flowers from special moments in life
— happy ones like weddings and first dates,
but also remembrances of loved ones from
funeral flowers — and turns them into jewelry
and keychains you can take with you
everywhere. “So many people kept asking
me that it organically grew,” Caramadre
says. “I realized I could turn this into something
beautiful.”
Because flowers hold so much significance,
Caramadre offers an optional “intention
infusion” into the jewelry. The person
asking for the piece can write something
on dissolvable paper — intentions, a personal
story, a phrase, a name — that goes
into the flower clay and becomes an unseen
part of the finished product. She can also
add crystal accents to the jewelry. “If
someone is looking for healing and love, I
might suggest incorporating rose quartz,”
she says.
To her, the process of making these flower
beads mirrors life itself. “Over time, the
flower curates into a completely new version
of what it was before,” she says. “You can
mold yourself into who you want to be in
the same way.” divinelyeternal.com
How to Preserve Your Flowers
✿ Air dry by hanging them upside
down in small bunches.
✿ Press petals into a book and let
them sit until dry.
✿ Place them in sand to absorb the
moisture.
RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l SEPTEMBER 2020 17