Love at First Fright: Creepy Cute Halloween Jewellery for Spooky Season

Spooky season is upon us again – the perfect opportunity to explore jewellery’s stranger side. For this year’s round-up of Halloween jewellery, we’re embracing the creepy cute aesthetic: the sweet spot that treads the line between unsettling and adorable. Think tadpoles dangling from your ears, wonky gemstone faces and curious little guardians to watch over you. Not conventionally pretty, but very cute all the same. I’ve picked out some of my favourites below, with a whole gallery of creepy cute jewels waiting for you at the end.

If ever there were a collection made for our Halloween theme, it’s Bibi van der Velden’s Enchanted Forest. The Dutch designer’s latest offering takes us deep into the murky waters of a garden pond, where frogs, tadpoles and even frogspawn are given the fine jewellery treatment in recycled 18K gold, abalone shell, carved rock crystal, opal and diamonds. 

Inspired by her childhood in the English countryside, van der Velden has created an entire ecosystem of jewels that chart the frog’s metamorphosis from spawn to tadpole to fully fledged amphibian. The jelly casing of the frogspawn is admirably lifelike, with rock crystal carved into bubbles that look as though they might wobble if you prodded them with a stick.

The frogs are also hard to resist. Iridescent abalone forms their bodies, while long golden limbs clamber across rings, earrings and necklaces, sometimes joined by tadpoles and those wonderfully weird clusters of spawn. The one-of-a-kind Big Frog Necklace takes the idea to its most extreme, creating a writhing miniature pondscape of frogs, tadpoles, diamonds and gemstones around the neck. Van der Velden describes the frog as a symbol of transformation, but I’m equally taken with the sheer eccentricity of turning one of nature’s slimiest life cycles into fine jewellery. Who knew frogspawn could look this fabulous?

Hargreaves Stockholm’s whimsical wonderland of Folk creatures had me bewitched from first sight. The collection taps into that childhood belief that strange little beings might be hiding at the bottom of your garden, bringing a storybook cast of companions to life in 18K yellow gold. Each has its own name and personality, from Sprout, a dedicated spreader of magic who tends flowers in grey city landscapes, reminding us to notice the beauty in everyday life, to Min, a reassuring fixer for moments when the world becomes overwhelming. My favourite is Queen Efve, a winged protector with diamond eyes, movable limbs and a tiny spiderweb hand-engraved on her dress. She’s strange, magical and a little bit eerie – perfect creepy cute Halloween jewellery, in other words.

London-based jeweller Fraser Hamilton has long enjoyed playing with the human form, transforming fragments of the body into miniature sculptures in precious metal. His Sapphire Mask pendants reduce the face to its bare essentials yet still manage to evoke an extraordinary range of emotions. Hand-carved in wax and cast in 9K yellow gold, gemstones are sunk into each mask in anthropomorphic arrangements that give them their peculiar expressions – some startled, some forlorn and others (my favourites) slightly unhinged. I have a real soft spot for Enamoured, whose two heart-shaped ruby eyes and complete lack of a mouth turn an otherwise featureless golden face into the most charming little oddball.

Skulls are hardly unexpected territory for Halloween jewellery, but Oxbow Designs’ grinning ghouls look more mischievous than macabre. Denver-based designer Maggie Rogers Kyle calls her tiny creations Old Souls, crafting them by hand in 14K Fairmined gold and giving each a personality of its own using reclaimed and repurposed diamonds. Diamond eyes and rows of baguette-cut diamond teeth create expressions that range from cheerfully goofy to slightly bewildered, with the occasional gemstone tear adding to their bizarre cuteness. A new drop of these one-of-a-kind pendants sold out almost immediately this week, so it seems I’m not alone in wanting to adopt an Old Soul of my own.

There are plenty more creepy cute treasures where these came from. In the gallery below, I’ve gathered together more Halloween jewellery populated by monsters, cats, aliens, rats and more. Consider this your invitation to revel in the weird and wonderful this All Hallows’ Eve.

Happy Halloween from us all at Katerina Perez – may it be equal parts creepy and cute.