Her motto is ‘Fighting Cancer One String At A Time’ and Elisa Guida is doing just that.
Elisa’s jewellery website offers necklaces, pendants and bracelets with a difference: each is fashioned from a guitar string donated by a celebrity musician.
String Attack! - Oli Brown in Bonn
Jon Bon Jovi, Buddy Guy and Joe Bonamassa are just some of the many guitarists who have answered the request to pop their used strings in an envelope with a note of authenticity and send them to Pennsylvania. Money raised from the sales goes to providing help for Cancer patients with such things as medicine costs, and providing access to treatment information. Guida had the jewellery idea after having battled cancer twice herself.
Strings 'n' Things
“The strings are usually thrown away. With my foundation they can be recycled and the customer can recieve a piece of musical history, along with knowing that they are helping someone who has been diagnosed with breast cancer”
Closest I'll get to owning a Vanquish Guitar like Oli Brown's
I gave the site a try myself. The good news is that there are plenty of attractive items to look at. The bad news is that they sell so quickly that most things are gone even by the time they seem to appear online. Luckily I got a heads up from Graham Brown that his youngster had recently donated some strings – Oli Brown also being one of my musical heroes I clicked onto ‘Strings for a Cure’ immediately. Even then almost everything had been snapped up. I did find a 1.09mm string from Oli’s show at Spirit of 66 in Belgium last October though. Having seen a pic of his blistered fingers a while ago I suspect that Elisa’s first job would have been to remove the blood – if so, she did a fine job. The string fragment is bent into a Cancer ‘Awareness Ribbon’ shape, held in place by its original brass ferrule.
If you’re interested in some unique musical jewellery and helping a good cause at the same time check out the website: