I lived in an apartment above her studio. As I entered my apartment, I realized how exhausted I was. It was a good sized apartment, with an ocean view. I could never move away from the ocean. When I was sad, my mother would always tell me, "Kaylin, the ocean gets to be blue, not you. Sea glass is it's tears." For some reason, that always made me happy again. The ocean, even though it is just a big body of water to some people, it is as important to me as buttons to Tiann. Little did I know, that the next day, Tiann would present me with a life-changing task.
The next day, when I entered Tiann's studio, she handed me a one-shoulder, white, unused, still-in-the-bag dress and gestured towards large pile of pure white buttons. Dumbfounded, I gave her a puzzled look.
"What do I-why did you-what is-?" the words wouldn't form right as I tried to say them.
"I want you to make the dress for a customer. It is going to be her wedding dress, so make it flawless." Tiann said. So I got to work. I started by very carefully making a vine pattern with intricate flowers made all out of buttons. After that, I sorted all of the white buttons by shape, then size, then pattern, until I finally found a way to put some of them together into an appealing pattern for the sleeve. Then I made an ornate pattern of larger flowers towards the top of the dress. I nicked my finger with the needle when I was finishing up one of the larger flowers. And I quickly pulled my hand away from the dress to prevent any blood from getting on the dress. I was worried that I might get blood on the dress, so I wrapped tape around the ends of my fingers. I had to make this dress perfect so Tiann would give me other dressmaking jobs. By the end of the day, the dress was nearly done. Exhausted after working all day, I went to my apartment. I fell asleep thinking about what I would add to the dress the next day.
The next day I worked the whole day. I was putting on the last few buttons when Tiann went home. I took a deep breath as I carefully sewed the last button onto the dress. As I was checking that the button was securely in place, the dress slipped off of the table. Because I was still holding firmly onto the fairly large button, it tore from the dress and made a large hole in the center of the dress. I had ruined it! All of my hard work in ruins. Tiann would never again trust me with a job this important. I just sat there shocked, tears dripping down my face, trying to think of what to do. Then I knew what to do.
When Tiann came to the studio the next day, I was already there. I was just finishing the new dress as she walked in the door.
"What did you do to the dress?" Tiann questioned, astounded and amazed as she looked at it.
I looked at the beautiful sea glass masterpiece I had created and tried to think of how to simply describe my work of art to her.
"I used the ocean's tears."
