Jewelry Making

Thank you to everyone who came to visit us at the Felt Club this past weekend. We had a great time and sold quite a few pieces… earrings seemed to be a bigger seller this year.

A few questions from the Bloglander Jewelry Making Mailbag that I hadn’t gotten to yet:

Jennifer writes: “I am just beginning in the whole jewelry making/beading process. I am interested in finding out the best way to produce bracelets using jewelry wire, esp. when it comes to attaching the clasps so it doesn’t look so … amateur. Thanks.”

Bloglander Jewelry Making says: Well, I know that it will take some time to get the technique down. I’m assuming you’re talking about using crimp beads or something similar to tie off the end of a bracelet. You might find this article about creating folded crimp beads helpful. You will need a special bead crimping tool, available at joann.com or other craft stores.

Some people also like to add something called “French Wire” (sometimes known as “bullion” or “gimp”) to cover up the bare jewelry cable/wire that shows where it connects to the clasp. It’s basically very thin silver wire that comes spooled like a slinky, and you insert the beading cable through the middle of it. See this About.com tutorial for an example of what it looks like.

I have to admit that beyond foldable crimps and small spherical crimp beads (the kind you just squeeze onto wire with normal pliers), I haven’t tried too many other ways to tie off bracelets. I know they have several new products out for finishing bead wire, including something called beading scrimps that actually employ a physical screw to tighten the crimp… I’ve been meaning to try those out one of these days.

Susan writes: “Thanks for the all the great tutorials! They are so clear and detailed unlike a lot of the other ones I’ve seen. Do you have a mailing list? I didn’t see one on your site.”

Bloglander Jewelry Making says: Thanks for the kind words… we do try hard to make detailed tutorials. Regarding the mailing list - we’ve gotten this query so many times that we’re going to try and figure out if it’d be worth it to set one up, and if so how to do that. Until then, we’re going to ask if you could bookmark the site and check in every so often. New tutorials are infrequent right now, so you don’t have to come to the site every day. Alternatively, you can subscribe to the RSS feed (www.bloglander.com/jewelrymaking/feed/) using your reader of choice (we have it set to “summary” right now, however).