On the weekends, I often work at Old World Wisconsin, an outdoor living-history museum in Eagle, Wisconsin. While there, I usually wear a reproduction bustle dress, the fashion of the 1870s.

While researching what kinds of jewelry I could wear with the dress, I found that Victorians often adorned themselves with hair! Hairwork was very popular as mourning jewelry and also as love tokens. Hair was woven or crocheted around wires or cords to make tubes of hair, which were then used for bracelets, necklaces, watch chains, and more. This hair jewelry was given to a loved one as a keepsake or, in the case of mourning jewelry, made from the hair of the deceased and saved. If you want to see some hairwork or learn more about it, visit the Victorian Hair Artists Guild or the Victorian Hairwork Society.

Some people think it's odd, but I think it's a wonderful tradition. I've never been a scrapbooker, but I might try making a bit of hairwork to remember loved ones by.

So tell me, would you make hairwork jewelry? Have you made jewelry out of unusual materials before?