When you first encounter the jewelry that Sarah McLellan and Kristina Ortega make under the name Mctega, the off-kilter shapes and the enticing colors will fight for your attention. Their palette ranges from pale neons to desert-inspired nudes to sea-water-esque blues, and the duo was kind enough to give us a tour of their current favorites living in their dye box. From left: AvocadoKristina: It kind of reminds me of a seventies refrigerator—you know how every house had Aztec gold or avocado appliances? If we’re missing something somewhere in our color scheme, we’re like, “Wait…avocado!” It saves the day a lot. Neon GreenSarah: When we got this, we were like, “Forget it—it’s the best thing in the world.” It’s so absurd and bright. We’ll usually tone it down a little bit with more clear, and it’s insane: The edges glow. OrangeKristina: That’s Sarah’s favorite.Sarah: I’ve been into orange for a while now, but we don’t get to use it that much. Right now, we’re doing more in a purple-blue-green colorway, which I love, but that orange is so pretty. TurquoiseKristina: I think it’s one of our most-used dyes. I want to say it’s in about three-fourths of all the bracelets.Sarah: We mix it with other blues and greens, too, to get totally different colors. PurpleKristina: I like the purple mixed with clear because it looks like natural-cut amethyst. It’s drop-dead gorgeous, with really rich purple streaks. Right this way to score the bracelet Kristina and Sarah made for Of a Kind! It’s purple, blue, and green.

The inaugural Mctega design “We met interning for Rodarte. I think Sarah was the first person I met there,” explains Kristina Ortega, one half of the Mctega team. “I actually answered the door when Kristina knocked for her first day of work,” adds Sarah McLellan, the other member of the jewelry-making duo. The two developed a connection so quickly that, upon wrapping up their gigs, they decided to launch a company that makes accessories that would look at home at Dylan’s Candy Bar or on Fraggle Rock. Here are just a few of the things they’ve picked up along the way. [Ed: We got kind of ‘motional reading these, because we  feel like we could have written them ourselves. Of a Kind fully endorses starting a business.] 1) You have to push and to know when to stop.Sarah: As younger designers, there have been times where we have these huge, grand ideas, but we don’t have resources to execute them. We’re always happy with the end result, but we’re very critical of what we put out. 2) You can figure shit out. No, really.Sarah: From the Rodarte girls, we took away the fact that you could do it for yourself—you don’t have to work for a giant company. It’s like they really woke up with this decision: “We’re doing this. We’re going to be what we really want to be.”Kristina: We learned how to pour silicone molds and how to make this strange chamber that pulls oxygen out of plastic. It’s those kind of weird things that we taught ourselves that probably aren’t things you get to learn when you work for somebody else. It’s valuable, and it’s the way we design. 3) There’s no such thing as a work schedule.Kristina: The weird thing is that there are some weeks when we can’t find things to do, and then other weeks when we have so much to do that we don’t get to breathe or sleep or do anything—you just have to get through it. It’s kind of rough, but we have a good sense of humor about it. We mess around a lot in the backyard.   4) Your experience is going to be different from anyone else’s.Sarah: Literally, six months after starting our line, we got an email from Barneys asking if we wanted to meet with them. That was so huge for us. It was like, “Are you kidding right now?” Six months ago, I was sitting in on a buying meeting with Rodarte, and now I’m here with my business partner about our stuff. But even if I did learn something by having those previous encounters, it’s always different for you personally. See how their hard work has paid off. Check out the awesome bracelet they made just for Of a Kind.

Kristina’s workspace The magic of the jewelry that the Mctega girls Sarah McLellan and Kristina Ortega create lies in the little plastic sculptures they develop for every piece. They’ve come up with what they call a chunk technique and a stalagmite one (the latter of which involves dripping layers and layers of colored polyester resin). And for the stand-out bracelet they dreamt up for Of a Kind, they imitated nature with homemade gems. Here, Sarah walks us through the process.To see how everything comes together—and buy one of the 25 bracelets—click here.“In this picture, we have everything we will need to create the gems from start to finish.”“We use clay to mold the mini gems from scratch—Kristina made each one! We use an acrylic finish (in the little clear bottle) to make them shiny, and then we use the clay pieces to create the silicone mold. The silicone mold-making process requires another group of supplies entirely and a 24-hour hardening period before you can use the mold to make the gems that we use in our jewelry.”“Once you have the silicone mold, you start making the gems by pouring resin into a mixing cut and adding the catalyst to start the reaction. You have to stir until everything is completely mixed. This ensures a proper reaction and eventually fully formed gems”“Then you add the dye of your choice and mix thoroughly: Neon green!”“Next, you pour the colored resin into the mold and repeat with other colors: turquoise! Then you allow the resin to harden. The speed of this process is dependent on a lot of factors including the amount of catalyst and the temperature. On a warm day with plenty of catalyst, we can de-mold in under an hour.”“After gem formation is complete—and they are dry—we drill them, string them up, and dip them into epoxy resin to give them a protective and shiny coat. Here they are hanging out to dry. Epoxy takes longer to harden, so give give them a full 24-hour drying time before we take them down and re-drill before chaining them together.”