On her Etsy profile, Sarah writes that she makes sculpted jewelry in her Toronto apartment. Her pieces are cute, like cookie-shaped rings, and creepy-cute, like cufflinks shaped like anatomical hearts. But one of her signature pieces is a set of heart-shaped “best friends” necklaces with the texture of green brains. It’s creepily adorable, and a best-seller. Apparently national chain Hot Topic agrees, since they happen to be selling a very similar design.

She wrote to the blog You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice about her predicament:

The part that gets me the most is there are many ways to make brains and the way I’ve specifically chosen to do them isn’t the same as a real brains texture. It’s a technique I use because of my medium of polymer clay, which is not the medium they’ve used. It feels like a copy to me and even gave my guts a churnin’ once I stumbled on them. After contacting hot topic and getting no response, I was wondering what others might think

It’s not a perfect copy, because it would be hard to mass-produce the exact same design and still meet disaffected-teen-appropriate price points.

Update: YTWWN reports that Hot Topic has pulled the necklace from their website and from store shelves pending an “investigation.”

I Heart Brains Best Friends Necklace Set [Etsy]
Have a Heart, Hot Topic! [You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice]

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