Introducing the Ancient Mayan Spring Collection — handcrafted pieces born from ancient beading traditions, arriving just in time to bloom.

I almost did not make this collection. 

Not because I ran out of time, or ideas, or resources. But because from November 2025 through January 2026, I was in Guatemala doing what I do every year — meeting with my makers at Lake Atitlán, sketching ideas, bringing a spring story to life — and I could barely find the story inside me.

I was holding someone I love through one of the hardest losses of his life. And quietly, privately, I was carrying my own.

Grief is strange when you're also supposed to be creative. Creativity lives in inspiration, in lightness, in the ability to imagine something that doesn't exist yet and believe it's worth making. I kept asking myself: how do I design a spring collection — something joyful, something full of color and life — when I feel like this? What do I have to offer right now?

So I did what I always do when I don't know what else to do. I went to the water.

Before I made my way to Panajachel — the town on the edge of Lake Atitlán where I meet each year with the artisans who bring my ideas to life — I spent time at the beach with some girlfriends. Just breathing. Letting the ocean do what oceans do. There's something about nature that doesn't ask anything of you. It just keeps going. The waves don't stop because you're sad. The light on the water doesn't dim because you're grieving. It just keeps being beautiful, and somehow that's exactly what you need.

When I finally arrived at the lake, something shifted. Lake Atitlán has that effect on people. It's ringed by volcanoes, impossibly blue, impossibly still in the early morning. I stayed one night at a hotel you could only reach by boat — which, if you know me, you know was a small act of surrender. I need my car. I need to be able to leave whenever I want. The freedom to come and go is not optional for me — it's just how I'm wired. But I only had one night, so I let myself be still. I let the lake hold me.

And then I sat with my makers.

That's the part that brought me back. There is a particular quiet that settles over you when you're surrounded by something being made by hand — by people who learned this from their mothers, who learned it from theirs, whose fingers move with the kind of knowledge that doesn't come from instruction but from inheritance. Watching them work re-energized me in a way I hadn't expected. The community of it. The care. The fact that they were going to pour this much devotion into something I sketched on a piece of paper.

I thought about you while I was there.

I thought: some of the people who will wear these pieces will be having a hard year too. Some of them will be grieving. Some of them will be holding someone they love through something impossible. And maybe — maybe — a pair of earrings that moves when you move, that catches light in a room, that someone made with their hands on the edge of a volcano lake in Guatemala, might remind them that beauty is still happening. That life keeps making things worth noticing.

That was the spring story I was looking for. Not despite the loss — because of it.

The Sacred Bloom Flower Earrings

The heart of this collection is the bloom. Each pair is handbeaded with thousands of tiny seed beads, forming a mandala-like flower at the center before releasing into flowing fringe. They come in colorways that feel like different moments in a single day — warm coral and blush with gold, soft pink and peach fading into marigold.

The fringe moves when you move. That aliveness is the whole point.

The Sacred Waterfall Earrings

White and gold seed beads cascade in layered fringe — tube beads mixed with rounds in a rhythm that reads like rainfall. Quieter than the florals, but no less alive. The kind of earring that makes a simple outfit feel chosen.

The Mayan Goddess Beaded Necklaces

Lace-like and architectural at the same time. Tiny beads woven into a repeating zigzag — turquoise, gold, obsidian, silver — forming something that looks weightless but is actually incredibly structured. They sit at the collarbone like they belong there.

The Antigua Gardens Flower Bracelets

Dimensional beaded blooms that sit slightly raised off the wrist — sculptural, satisfying, collectible. They come in a full spectrum: crimson and turquoise, forest and gold, lavender and rose, midnight and teal. Wear one. Stack three. Let your wrist tell the story.

When the shipment arrived last week, my team had to open the box without me because I was in Austin, Texas. I had a little FOMO seeing the team through video calls enjoying the big reveal and wearing the pieces first.

I never really know what these pieces will look like when they're complete. I leave Guatemala with sketches and intentions, and have full trust in the makers to do the rest. What came out of that box was more colorful, more vibrant, more full of life than I had imagined.

Now, when I look at these pieces, I think about the lake. The boat. The beach before that. The grief I was carrying, and the grief I was holding for someone else. And how somehow, out of all of that, came these beautiful pieces.

Nature did that. Community did that. The quiet devotion of people beading flowers on the edge of a volcano lake did that.

I hope you can feel it when you wear them.

AN INTENTION FOR THE SEASON

If you're in a hard season right now, if you're grieving, or holding someone through grief, or simply tired in that deep way that rest doesn't fix, let this be a small reminder.

Life keeps making things worth noticing. You don't have to feel joy to wear it. Sometimes you wear it first, and the feeling follows.

— Cristy

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