Archive for March 31st, 2006
Local woman brings feral attitude to performance and jewelry
Ferndale/Berkley Mirror, MI
Rio Scafone wants women to unleash their feral sides.
The Royal Oak-based performer has designed her own line of Feral Apparel jewelry and items, but she’s selling more than products. She’s selling a philosophy.
Scafone comes from a performing family (her uncle is rockabilly pioneer Jack Scott) and splits her time between acting, modeling, designing and recording music.
She created Feral Apparel last year while in “The Smell of the Kill,” a three-woman play.
“The character I was playing went from doormat housewife to independent soul,” Scafone said. “The director told me the character was becoming feral, her feral qualities were coming out.”
Scafone’s creativity kicked into gear, and she designed choker necklaces embellished with Swarovski crystals to show off her feral, feline side.
Cast members wore the necklaces when greeting the audience.
“People saw them and would love them,” Scafone said. “It became an ongoing analogy on the set to become very feral. It became a symbol for how we would like to live our lives.”
She set up a Web site (feralgirl.com) to sell her designs and received orders from across the United States and Canada.
Stores in Los Angeles and Royal Oak now carry her designs, and her jewelry could appear on TV soon.
Ted Moreno, a producer and long-time friend of Scafone’s, offered her a role on “The Inner Circle,” a TV show he is working on that mixes vampires and politics. She mentioned her jewelry line and he liked the designs so much he asked her to make a custom choker for the show.
“Since it is a gothic TV show, I thought her jewelry would be perfect for some character on there,” Moreno said. “She came out with a great design.”
Although Scafone has made a living in metro Detroit, she said if the show takes off, she’ll spilt her time between California and Michigan.
Much of her work has been commercials, promoting everything from dentists to Michigan travel to lawyer Sam Bernstein.
Her other work varies from local independent films to modeling for nationwide billboards. She once appeared on two billboards in Times Square at the same time.
She’s also creating a local TV show to spotlight local artists and women in business, an idea that’s an outgrowth of her feral philosophy of women coming into their own.
“It’s a movement,” she said. “It’s a revolution.”
March 31st, 2006
Art to Wear offers jewelry, handbags, pottery, etc.
Northwest Herald
CRYSTAL LAKE – Residents can buy jewelry, pottery and other original works from more than a dozen area artists Friday at an event to help benefit a local animal shelter.
“They’re all one-of-a-kind things that you can’t find in a department store,” said Mary Telfer Holden, who helped to organize another Art to Wear benefit after its successful debut last year.
Admission is free to the event, which lasts from 3 to 10 p.m. at Dole Mansion’s Lakeside Center, 401 Country Club Road, Crystal Lake. The show also will feature a coffee bar and the band This is This will play live music 8 to 10 p.m.
Holden said 20 artists from McHenry County and around Chicago will sell items ranging from felted handbags and scarves to decorative pottery and glassware. Part of the proceeds will benefit Pets in Need, a no-kill animal shelter.
The show offers something to people of all ages, Holden said, and prices range from a few dollars for original notecards to several hundred dollars for fine jewelry.
“It is really for a good cause,” Holden said. “It really helps the community.”
March 31st, 2006
BWWMH Auxiliary to hold jewelry sale
The Thomasville Times, AL
The $5 Jewelry Sale returns to Bryan W. Whitfield Memorial Hospital’s classroom April 6 and 7 just in time to fill your Easter baskets. Sponsored by the BWWMH Auxiliary, the event has become one of their most popular fundraisers as shoppers take advantage of the incredible $5 price for costume jewelry of all types.
Everything from rings to necklaces will be on sale during the event when shopping hours will be from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day.
For more information, contact any member of the Auxiliary or call 287-2626.
March 31st, 2006
Photos fade, but DNA jewelry is forever
Japanese company offers people a unique way to remember loved ones
MSNBC
TOKYO - People hoping to remember deceased loved ones with something more permanent than a lock of hair or faded photo can now have a piece of their DNA saved in a pendant.
Eiwa Industry Co. recently began selling pendants for preserving genetic mementos of the dead.
The company, which mainly manufactures decorative metal fixtures for houses, entered the DNA pendant business last August with a line of products for saving the DNA of bygone pets. Quickly, the company started receiving requests for pendants for human DNA, said general manager Morihito Ikai
“Bereaved parents would contact us and say, `If you can save a piece of a dog or cat’s DNA, why not some of my daughter’s?’” he said.
The human DNA pendants come in two shapes. One resembles a rounded perfume bottle. The other is shaped like a stylized human face, cut in such a way that it can fit together with a second pendant of the same shape — “for couples,” Ikai said.
Made of silver, the pendants are $428, including the cost of extracting DNA — usually from a strand of hair or piece of fingernail. The genetic material is placed in a crystal, which in turn is enclosed in the pendant.
While the perceived permanence of a DNA sample is one of the product’s attractions, Ikai said some customers also seem to be hoping to hold on to genetic material in case it becomes possible to clone human beings.
March 31st, 2006
MPCA gives guidelines for disposing of lead-containing jewelry
West Central Tribune, MNÂ
ST. PAUL
Jewelry and other products believed to contain high levels of lead should be disposed of at a household hazardous waste site, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency said.
The MPCA issued this week’s advisory after a 4-year-old Minneapolis boy recently died from lead poisoning. Jarnell Brown, 4, of Minneapolis died of lead poisoning Feb. 22 after swallowing a charm from a bracelet distributed by Reebok. The charm was found to be 90 percent lead and has since been recalled.
The MPCA said concerned parents should not throw such trinkets in the trash but should take them to a household hazardous-waste site.
Since media reports of the boy’s death, parents “have been ringing the phones off the hook” at the Minnesota Department of Health and asking what products they should throw out, said John Gilkeson, an MPCA toxicity reduction expert. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission also has received calls from people wondering what to do with the bracelets. Some callers were instructed to throw them out or return the products to stores.
Minnesota officials are trying to offer clearer guidance because initially, “we didn’t put together a coherent disposal message,” Gilkeson said.
The state has a program for disposing of lead weights used for fishing, but officials didn’t let people know the same procedures should be followed with children’s lead jewelry and toys, Gilkeson said.
Household lead products collected at the hazardous waste sites will be recycled into buckshot, car batteries, fishing tackle, electronic solder and circuits and other materials.
March 31st, 2006
American Girl recalls unsafe kids’ jewelry
KAREÂ - CBS 5
The Associated Press
Published March 30, 2006, 9:59 AM CST
Wisconsin-based American Girl is recalling about 180,000 pieces of children’s jewelry because they contain high levels of lead.
The jewelry was sold at American Girl Place in Chicago and New York and at the American Girl Outlet in Oshkosh, Wis., from May 1999 through February of this year.
Lead is toxic if ingested by young children and can cause severe health problems.
The recall includes American Girl necklaces, bracelets, earrings and hair accessories for girls. The jewelry’s packaging features a red and white cardboard backing with “American Girl” and “Made in China” written on the front.
(For additional information, contact American Girl at 800-659-0164 or go to www.cpsc.gov or www.americangirl.com/recall )
March 31st, 2006
