Trying to be Manly

I don't make men's jewelry.  It tends to be quite boring.  You either have to stick to a simple, repeating pattern, work with huge, bulky elements that are expensive and difficult to come by, or submit to a completely monotone, unexciting design that would probably be better off not existing for all the attention it draws.  
It's hard to get men's jewelry right.  On one hand, you want to create something to adore, amplify and embellish.  On the other, our culture seems to believe that that sort of thing and men is mutually exclusive...unless they are drag queens.  There's almost no examples of men's jewelry that I can duplicate or expand from.  I had to find inspiration from something else.

I took a look at manly men's bags to get ideas.  What I saw was interesting.  Plain, dull colors (like I expected), boxy minimalist designs (also, like I expected), and something odd.  Quirky things, usually focusing on one major element.  There was the bag that looked like clipart...

It's real!  It just looks like that

It looked like something that it wasn't, such as an envelop, turtle shell, or that Simon game from the 90s.

Courtesy of Zazzle

Courtesy of Style Magazine

Or it was festooned with motifs from cartoons, games and comic books.  It made sense that these recurring themes in men's bags could be applied to jewelry.  I tried.  Let me know what you think?

I chose the skull design because I had plenty of them lying around and because it's a common inclusion in men's casual bags.  Somehow skulls + dark colors = manly, so that's what we went with.  Honestly, I feel that it's unisex, well besides the length of the bracelet.  It's a great deal longer than I usually make because men tend to have larger wrists.  I'm satisfied with how it turned out.  Why don't you guys give it a try.