It's like a cross between Ed Hardy and the Day of the Dead. Awful awful awful. The logo looks OK, but it reminded me too much of Juicy Couture.

And that?! That looks like some hippie/amish/grandma mish-mash.

I got all grumbly about them ruining a perfectly good brand name with not-so-great style, then it hit me: Why didn't I just make my own Romeo and Juliet themed jewelry? Designs and images swirled through my head; the possibilities were endless. A few months ago, in my bouts of wanting-to-express-myself-creatively-but-need-skills tantrums, I learned that you can make silver jewelry through Precious Metal Clay, or PMC. This completely rocked my world. I have always been very eh about jewelry available, either at local craft fairs or in the mall. Etsy has some pretty amazing stuff, but none really drove me to whip out my credit card and start ordering [although there were a couple that were really, really close.] I had always fantasized about making my own, but living in an apartment with no car really made going out and taking silversmithing/jewelry classes impossible. PMC would enable me to basically MAKE my designs like I would do with regular clay, and all I had to do with get it fired and PRESTO! Silver jewelry that I LIKE! I would never have to go out and buy another necklace that I wasn't fully satisfied with. Then I found out I needed a kiln to fire my jewelry, and all my hopes and dreams of beautiful silver jewelry flew out the window and were indefinitely deferred, since I wasn't planning on shelling out a couple hundred dollars to buy a friggin kiln. Until last week. When the abomination that was Romeo and Juliet Couture became apparent to me, I went ahead and did further research, and found out, lo and behold, you can fire your jewelry pieces if you have a gas stove and stainless steel mesh. Which I definitely had. All hopes renewed, I immediately went on a daydreaming/ designing spree. What has resulted are 6 pages of pencil and pen scrawls of designs that were a mix of cutesy, punk-ish, and definitely Felicia-approved pieces. I opened up an Etsy account, since that seems to be the venue people are peddling their stuff. The name of the brand? Romeo Killed Juliet, or RxJ. Why killed? Well, if you want to play the blame game, technically if Romeo didn't off himself, Juliet wouldn't have had to off herself in desperation. Then you can argue that if Juliet hadn't taken that stupid sleeping potion to begin with, they could have figured something out. Either way, someone's got to take the blame. Sorry Romeo ;) Plus, Juliet killed Romeo, or Romeo Was Killed by Juliet, just doesn't have the same catchiness. And I kind of wanted a little shock factor, slight morbidness in the name. I made Dick Blick a nice lump sum of cash, ordered a kit and the clay, along with a set of tools. Grandiose plans ahead, we'll see how this goes...