With a spark of inspiration, Sabrina Harris ran to her messily organized bead collection station with about two or three dozen plastic drawers filled with locks, chains, charms, beads, and wire she uses to build her necklaces and began her jewelry-making process.
Harris, a college student in Boston and bead enthusiast, is the founder of Different Bugs, a unique line of jewelry that encapsulates her memories, thoughts and emotions.
“I always thought Different Bugs would represent a different little insect in a world of a billion different insects,” said Harris. “All the pieces seem alive to me and have always had some sort of energy to them.”
Harris completes at least three pieces per week while each necklace can take from one to seven hours to create.
Her customers have been rapidly purchasing the Different Bugs $50 to $250 necklaces, sometimes immediately after she uploads them to her online shop.
Harris titles her pieces according to what the finished piece looks like.
“Moss,” for example, is a necklace made with freshwater pearls, quartz, dalmatian moonstone, czech glass, vintage lucite, lampwork glass, a antique 14k gold-plated pearl clasp, beading wire and a frog charm, she imagines the objects to resemble a biome in which moss would reside in.
Customers can imagine what shrimp, super mario, squiggly bugs, nightmare, intergalactic and nintendogs, which are the names of other necklaces, might look like.
Harris said the disorganization pops ideas into her head.
“Keeping things organized, doesn't do anything but keep things organized,” Harris said. “Sometimes I see a pair of beads next to another item and think, ‘I would never have thought those items would go together.’”
It’s almost as if the items magically sprout legs and travel across her trenches of wire and beads to pair themselves together with their friends, enemies or lovers.
One-by-one Harris hand selected her beads, placed them on her desk in her desired pattern and began.
She started in the middle of the wire, inserted a key ring followed by a yellow chunky chain connected to a heart-shaped bead, and closed it together with a crimp bead attached to a few dangly transparent heart charms, circle, and flat beads. As she continued she added a smiley face, butterfly, and heart-shaped charm and viewed them as they dangled from the same wire. All the while she surrounded the necklace with a few unnoticed, yet essential seed and regular beads and closed it with a fishhook lock. She stopped, assessed her work, and thought, “Wait, that doesn’t look just right.” and began again.
French Woods Festival, a performing arts summer camp in upstate New York, provided 11-year-old Harris with inspiration, in the form of a chainmail class, that would unlock her undiscovered passion for jewelry making.
“It felt really cool as an eleven-year-old kid opening and closing jump rings, putting them together and seeing them all string to make a bracelet,” Harris said.
As she ruffled through the colorful metal jump rings provided, she fell in love with the tactical manner of working with metal, even if it was in the least intense form.
When Harris entered high school to discover influencers around the world were promoting Shopjeen, a quirky online shop selling emoji cups, chunky phone cases and $30 candy-letter looking bracelets.
“As a 14-year-old girl, I thought to myself, ‘I could just make that,’” said Harris, discovering her second push of inspiration.
She began making bracelets with her purchase of star beads, heart beads, letter beads and elastic string, some of which she still uses to this day.
“Bracelets were the only thing I made because I couldn't figure out how to keep beads on the string without them falling off,” Harris said.
By the summer of 2019, Harris was an intern at Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, an animation production studio in Los Angeles and found herself adding jewelry into her online shopping cart, but not being able to hit purchase.
She reminisced about when she created chainmail at camp and suddenly understood why she could never hit “purchase” on the jewelry creations she added to her online shopping cart.
It’s because she knew she could make the items herself.
Adding onto her inspiration to create jewelry, Harris and her friend purchased jewelry making items together and Harris created the DifferentBugs Instagram account to promote her creations.
Last summer, Harris supported her college friend by purchasing one of their necklaces, a beaded choker with a bow.
Upon analysis of the necklace Harris discovered the secret to keep beads from falling off: crimp beads.
Her discovery of crimp beads and the boredom that came from the COVID-19 lockdown gave Harris the last push she needed to bring the DifferentBugs Instagram back to life and pursue one of her many passions, jewelry making.
“And the rest is history,” she said. “From there I continued to make jewelry.”
The bead enthusiast is an equally eclectic individual with passions such as fashion, law, theatre and jewelry making.
Harris said it can get difficult to let go of her creations, but she appreciates her customers and says it’s special being able to give a part of herself away.
“It's a wild ride falling in love with one of my own creations and then having to let it go and give it to someone else,” she said. “Like a life cycle. Birth and death. It just keeps going.”
When purchases are made, Harris immediately puts the money back into her business so she can purchase longer lasting, higher quality pieces along with knick knacks that to her, will be even harder to let go.
The decorative objects and charm patterns metaphorically and sometimes literally represent Harris’ history.
“Most of my collection at this point is vintage and antique beads, handmade beads, things I find randomly and old jewelry from my childhood I take apart and use,” Harris said. “I know I have a lot, but I always think that I don’t have enough.”
A collection she recently added to her shop is one where customers can purchase a surprise necklace based on the mood she was in when the pattern was created.
The necklaces vary from moods such as love, lonely, random, nostalgic, sad and happy.
“It’s like a stream of consciousness coming from my brain into my hands and a piece of jewelry,” Harris said. “Everything has its own little personality.”
Vanessa Carlos, Different Bugs customer says she has received many compliments when she wears Harris’ necklaces and says they are worth every penny.
“Their jewelry feels nostalgic, like each bead is from different times of your childhood,” Carlos said. “I feel magical when I wear my Different Bugs necklaces.”
Hannah Lee, another Different Bugs customer says she’s seen many jewelry accounts on the rise, but nothing quite like Different Bugs.
“It feels like a whole different world of jewelry,” Lee said.
As far as Different Bugs’ future, Harris says she is unsure where she will go from here.
“I have so many other things I want to do with my life and it’s kind of stressful thinking ‘oh god, I kinda have to choose one of these or two of these and they're just so different,’” Harris said. “It would be really great if I could make jewelry all day all the time and be able to support myself off of it.”
As a senior theater major Harris says law school, fashion and jewelry making are a few pathways she is considering after college.
“I don’t like thinking too far into the future,” Harris said. “Right now, I love making jewelry. This is my passion.”