I’ve been trying out different jewellery-making techniques over the past few months: working with precious metal clay and getting to grips with a kiln; trying to achieve that “real marbley stone” look with polymer clay and resin (those videos absolutely dominated my social media feeds for quite some time earlier in the year); prong setting individual stones; reviving my long-forgotten love for chainmaille weaving. But I didn’t feel like there was any real point to the pieces I made, other than serving as a physical reminder that I was convinced whatever the technique was would become My Thing.
The image in my head was always better than the finished product, though. I know it’s likely that all I needed to do with any of those ventures was to stick at it, and it wouldn’t be long before I’d see an improvement, impressing myself with my new-found talent. But I am impatient and I want to be great at whatever I’m trying immediately. So sticking with something I’m not an Instant Pro at, really is difficult.
And then it just so happened that I got my hands on some strands of the most gorgeous, tiny little faceted beads recently, and I’m having a great time.
They’re all precious stones, which is something I tried to keep away from for as long as possible: making your own jewellery is not a cheap hobby, even if you sell your pieces. Plus, though it can be easy to forget, they’re naturally occurring rocks that have to be mined; they’re pretty much a finite resource with a big environmental and economical impact. Another reason I want to find out where I can source lab-created gemstone beads. But in terms of availability, especially if we’re looking at the bead-quality, stringable kinds, natural stones are more readily accessible. Accessible even to me. Me! Incredible.
Although I said “precious stones”, and went on about how jewellery making is not a very bank account-friendly hobby, I should point out that I’ve not omitted any of the Big Four from my little photo gallery above. ‘Precious’ isn’t a word reserved for diamonds, emeralds, rubies and sapphires anymore. I read something the other day that commented on how gemologists are moving away from referring to stones like opal and turquoise as ‘semi-precious’, and I love that. Diamonds aren’t all that. Well, they are. It’s just that so many other gems deserve the love that those clumps of glittering carbon get, too.
Anyway, like I say I’m having a great time, with all the different colours and shapes. Well, not “shapes” plural; it’s all strand after strand of spherical sparklies as you can see. And I think that’s the beauty of it.
Being quite an untidy person, both in mind and in… well, in general, I appreciate a bit of uniformity. It’s quite satisfying to see evenly sized things in even rows of even numbers. It might sound a bit silly, but I think this “sameness” is a key ingredient in making a good-looking piece of jewellery. For me, anyway. Fully content to only speak for myself here. And it’s quick, too! Always a plus. For example, I got three stretchy bracelets done the other night in roughly the time it would take for me to weave a few inches of Byzantine chainmaille. Which is still not very long, but it’s a lot easier to write a product description for my next Etsy listing right after making dainty little bracelets than inches and inches of individually and intricately linked chain.
So stretchy bracelets is where I’m at right now. And rings. Stretchy rings are something I didn’t know I needed in my life. I’m back in my comfort zone of stringing one bead after another after another. Reassuringly predictable: Add your beads until the desired length is reached, tie a secure knot, add a blob of glue, wait for that to dry, and Robert’s your mother’s brother!
In some ways, it might have made more sense for me to make the strands go further by using them more sparingly. Maybe adding a one or two beads onto a pair of drop earrings, or every few inches or so on a chain necklace. But that would feel like treating them as commas or full stops at the end of a sentence, when in actual fact they are the whole sentence.
That could well be the most pretentious thing I have ever written, and I can’t decide whether I’m sorry about it. I’m not deleting it, though.
You should see the bracelets in my shop very soon. And maybe rings, too. I somehow have enough of the beads left that I could get a few more rings out of the strands.
The aim is to have them all up and listed by 10 July. There’s no particular significance for me about that date, it’s just that on the day before I started typing this (1 July), I’d posted on Instagram about them being available in my shop next week. And the 10th is the last day of what is still at the time of writing, next week. Also it rhymed nicely with “sneak peek”.
Right, that’s all from me for now. I still have some more fine-tuning to be getting on with before my newest pieces are ready to be released into the wild. In the meantime, I have a quick question: Could I get a show of hands on who’s interested in the idea of a little jewellery Top-Up/Refresher/First Aid kit kind of thing? Safety chain, spare earring backs, small carabiner clip, all in a nice little fabric pouch? Just comment “Yes” or something if fancy the sound of that.
Thank you so much for popping in and having a read. Have a lovely rest of your day!
If you’d like to see more from me, there are other posts on the blog to read if you haven’t already. Plus, you can find me on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, and of course, you can treat yourself and visit my Shop)!
BRIDGE JEWELLERY 