Brooch-collages featuring Mickey and Minnie Mouse, customized plastic Bullyland figurines adorned with imitation pearls, rhinestones, and bells, circa 1980, unique pieces

 Bibliography:
 - Novelty, chic and cheap jewelry,
 Jane Mulvagh, Éditions du Chêne, 1989, pages 131 and 185

 American Wendy Gells experimented with a glue gun to create her collage jewelry in the 1980s. "The principle of my creations," she explains, "is to cover the entire available surface of a piece of jewelry." This horror of empty space led her to cover her bracelets, brooches, mirrors, drinking glasses, and Victorian dolls with a kaleidoscope of artificial stones, plastic cherubs, imitation pearls, and leather.
 Gellmania swept across the United States, where collectors of her unique and vernacular pieces abound. Whether wearable or sculptural, her creations even graced the dining room table of a whimsical American collector. One of her necklaces, titled Landing Strip, depicts a runway overflown by eleven airplanes, crafted from crystal and rhinestones—a poetic and humorous evocation of highly artistic kitsch. Wendy Gells even went so far as to graft a bromeliad onto the bark of a tree to obtain red flowers at Christmastime and incorporate them into bracelets, the conceptual and artistic quintessence of her passion for "living" jewelry.