Jewelry Making

The latest jewelry poll held a big surprise for me. We asked readers what their favorite type of glass beads were. Admittedly, there are always only 4 choices in our polls so I’m sure many other different types of glass beads were represented. But anyhow, the winner was Lampwork Beads.

Here are the complete results:

I fully expected Czech Pressed Beads to come out by far on top as far as the “average” jewelry makers who mostly do beading were concerned. This is because they aren’t super expensive, and have a lot more consistency in quality and tend to be more “refined” in look than just your ordinary cheaper glass beads from Michaels or Joann.

Granted, at 171 votes the Czech beads nearly tied Lampwork’s 181 votes. Seed Beads were just about where I expected they’d be in third place with 102 votes - it’s extremely useful to have several hanks of various colors around at all times, but I don’t think they’re anything to write home about for appearance. But I’m sure some jewelry designers who wake those wonderful woven seed bead creations are going to beg to differ!

Well, I gotta admit that a lot of those Lampwork beads are indeed gorgeous. I actually confused everything by throwing in “Furnace Glass” into the mix which is sort of related to lampwork. But I believe that Furnace Glass is meant to refer to those beads that look like candy or licorice. They are made using long thin rods of glass that are melted and fused together and then cut into chunks.

Whereas with Lampworking, they actually may add other colored glass to the surface of the existing glass bead in order to create vibrant designs. I think that’s the difference, but again correct me if I’m wrong on that. Anyhow, Furnace Glass brought up the rear with only 57 votes. I still like these beads that look like colorful candy pieces quite a bit, and it’s evident some of you do too!

Our next poll asks what your favorite gemstone shape is. Again, I only have the four slots for my poll, so I’ve combined several of the shapes together.

I hadn’t visited Stylebakery in awhile so when I went there yesterday there were a lot of new jewelry designers in their Designers on the Rise series. Here’s one that I picked to show today: Jessica Hicks Jewelry.

From her studio in Nantucket, Jessica creates bold yet highly delicate precious metal-centric pieces infused with a playful sense of wonder. Having attended Worcester Center for Crafts and later at University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth under jewelry and metals, she later decided to put her metalworking skills to the test and started up her own fashion jewelry line. Her focus is earrings and pendant necklaces though she does have a few bracelets.

Here’s a little bit about her design philosophy from her website:

“My jewelry is contemporary and bold. I design pieces that demand attention with their geometric shapes, hidden elements, movement and texture. My creations encourage further investigation; where the observer expects to see stones set, I place free-flowing crystals that give the illusion of color contained within pierced metal.”

Continue reading “Jessica Hicks Jewelry” …

I’ve decided to dig through the mailbag for the next couple of weeks to put questions to rest. That instead of putting up a new jewelry tutorial which is what I’ve been meaning to do for ages now. Have no fear though - there should be one upcoming which combines the Mailbag AND a tutorial…

From the Bloglander Jewelry Making Mailbag:

Brieanne writes:
Hi- I would like to make jewelry by setting images into pendants (like this one)

What are the empty pendants called-frames, cups, etc? And where do you find them? How does one make these? Thanks!

Bloglander Jewelry Making says: Whew, I’ve felt out of my depth trying to talk about jewelry making that I dont’ have a lot of experience in. So, I’m relying on you readers to correct me where applicable!

The above photo, by the way, is from the Etsy website who we’ve profiled here before as a great way to sell your jewelry w/out needing to be web saavy. (Credit for the photo and the seller: barbarauppsala. I don’t know how long the link above that Brieanne listed will be good for so I screengrabbed it to show.)

I’m pretty sure what you’re talking about is some sort of Cabochon Mounting (Pendant Mounting?) which is basically an oval or circle loop of metal where the cabochon stone, gemstone, crystal or other pendant sits. There are a huge variety of them. Some of them have 4 or more small pre-notched “prongs” on the mounting that you fold over the stone in order to seat and secure it.

Continue reading “Mailbag: Cabochon Mountings” …

Sorry everyone, I know a lot of people have sent in questions for the “From the Mailbag” section and we basically have not answered ANY of them yet. Too much jewelry making, not enough time! =) Anyhow, I’ll try and start catching up over the next couple months. Here’s one for today:

From the Bloglander Jewelry Making Mailbag:

Heidi F. writes: “I am looking for a cheap base metal finding. I have been buying them at Michaels Craft store, but they stopped selling them. The package calls them rhinestone settings, but they are not the kind that crimp around the rhinestone, the rhinestone is just glued to the top of the piece and it has loops on either end to string them together.”

Bloglander Jewelry Making says: I haven’t really used the rhinestone settings that you described before, but I think I know what you’re talking about. I’ve seen small base metal (brass or copper?) cups that are meant to hold beads or stones at Joann’s before. But I’m not sure if they had loops or not… actually, I wonder if they may be listed as “Bead Caps” instead of “Rhinestone Settings”?

A quick search on Rings n Things and Fire Mountain doesn’t show many results for rhinestone settings, but it does bring back quite a few on bead caps. The pic at left is from another site I found (jansjewels.com) and seems to be what you’re talking about with the loops on either side.

The only thing is that it DOES seem to have the four crimps that are meant to go around the stone. Also, it is a concave instead of a flat surface, though if you’re gluing something down this might actually be better because it’ll cup the stone more securely and probably make it so it doesn’t get knocked off as easy. I didn’t see any that didn’t have the 4 crimps on them, though there are a variety with open / closed backs and 0, 1 or 2 loops. Maybe someone else knows if we’re on the right track… ?

I promised to show off some of the items we picked up at the IGJS we attended this month. One of the types of jewelry making components that we saw quite a bit of are precious stones, beads and mother of pearl shell that had large holes in them. I had to do a bit of searching, but I think a common name for these interesting pieces are “jewelry donuts”.

Now, we aren’t huge fans of following trends so we have no idea whether this has already come and gone. Interestingly, I did see them featured in the latest Fire Mountain catalog. I know I’ve seen this type of bead many times before made of various types of gemstone, glass and even wood. But at the show it just seemed like it was EVERYWHERE. What was mostly interesting is that in addition to the usual “round” jewelry donut, they also had different shapes like squares, rectangles and even triangles and trapezoids.

Continue reading “Square MOP Jewelry Donuts” …

Whew! Can you say gem-mania??! We have been meaning to pay a visit to the International Gem and Jewelry Show and finally got a chance to last week. The show is a massive bazaar of gems, minerals and jewelry from all different stores and shops from around the area and abroad. It was developed 37 years ago (by Herbert A Duke, Sr.) and has grown to about 80 shows per year in 30 cities in the U.S.

OK, so attending this show was a long time coming and we thought we knew what to expect. However, the sheer amount of gems and beads available was staggering. We have previously attended the one-room Rings -n- Things special travelling gem shows before and thought there was a pretty decent selection. The IGJS was about 30 times bigger!

Walking into the show floor (our show was held at the Pasadena Convention Center in Southern Cal) is somewhat of a sensory overload, and we actually had to do a “first-pass” around the room before even picking anything up.

There are a ton of folks selling jewelry making items like gemstones, beads, findings, wire and chain. But interestingly, there are also quite a few stores selling items that are already assembled or ready-for-purchase jewelry. I guess that is because a lot of the people who come in aren’t looking for bargains on supplies but actually want to pick up jewelry for their own use. Even though we could safely ignore those particular booths, the number of vendors was still daunting.

The prices were pretty good all around, but we hadn’t really prepared lists of items we needed or done research on exactly how much things cost. So it was a bit difficult to do smart shopping. We overheard one vendor say to someone that a booth at the show costs over a thousand dollars for the 3 day show. Still, even at those show prices many vendors had nearly all their items marked down. You just had to know what to look for.

Continue reading “Intl Gem and Jewelry Show” …

We are going to be starting a new feature here at Bloglander Jewelry Making: a “From the Mailbag” section. Basically, we’ll post up questions that people have submitted about jewelry making and other related issues. The reason for this is that a ton of mail comes in asking about a particular question, and we aren’t always able to answer it properly either due to time constraints or due to lack of knowledge. So hopefully, there will be some visitors who may be able to shed some light on the issue by commenting. We’ll definitely TRY to answer these questions but can’t guarantee an authoritative answer (or any answer at all for that matter!)

From the Bloglander Jewelry Making Mailbag:

Katherine B. writes: “I was wondering if you can help me find a certain chain. I’m looking for small gauge, delicate chain that looks almost black, or copper chain. Ive looked everywhere and I saw some jewelry with it and I would like to try something like it. For earrings and necklaces. All i can find is 2mm, and that seems too thick.”

Bloglander Jewelry Making says: Hmm… having not worked with darker metal jewelry chain and with no picture to go on, this seems like a difficult question. I assume you mean “non-coated” chain, so it’s the actual metal that is almost dark (or it’s plated with a metal that’s dark). I’ve seen a few places that carry smaller gauge chain in a metal called “gunmetal”. Here’s one example, from Rings -n- Things. I’ve taken the liberty of including a pic of it below.

It looks darker to me, but I’m not sure that’s what you’re going for. I’m not even sure what metal this “gunmetal” color chain is made of, although the descriptions sometimes say “imported brass footage chain”. It’s made of soldered links and is 1.1 mm (unfortunately, looks to be out of stock). I’ve also seen something called “antiqued” chain, but I didn’t see this on their site.

I was just clued into the MJSA Trade Show for Jewelry Making which is taking place this Fall in Rhode Island. Just what is the MJSA? It’s the Manufacturing Jewelrs and Suppliers of America organization which is dedicated to helping designers, jewelry manufacturers, suppliers, gem dealers and anyone connected to the business of making jewelry achieve greater profitability. Members have access to cost-saving biz plans, marketing / promotion opportunities, buyers guides, the MJSA jewelry academy and advertising opportunities.

They also put out a print publication, the MJSA journal, and you can get a free trial copy of on their site. It’s a pretty decent mag, though more serious than your standard beader magazine. It focuses more on the business and marketing side of jewelry making as opposed to “how-to” tutorials.

Continue reading “MJSA Trade Show” …

We got the new Fire Mountain Gems catalog in the mail the other day. Fire Mountain is a fairly decent wholesaler of beads, gems, jewelry findings, and other beader related things. We’ve used them quite a bit and would recommend them for their excellent customer service, at least for the orders we’ve done.

Anyhow, featured on the front of their June-September 2006 catalog were Cane Beads Assortments. So what are these colorful cane beads anyhow? They are actually furnace glass beads made using Italian glassworking techniques. They get their Furnace name from the fact that they require a large (fairly large anyhow) glass furnace and an annealing kiln to make.

They get their “Cane” name because they are made using several colored canes of glass that are fused together on a mandrel. The resulting long fused glass piece is then cut across into various shapes and sizes. Cane beads can be cylindrical, square, rectangular and triangular in shape. The resulting beads have what look like vertical stripes because of the many different colored canes fused together.

Beginning jewelry makers often use cane beads in longer necklaces that feature pieces of random size, shaps and color. It seems to be much easier to go this route rather than try to find beads of the exact same size and color scheme (and they’re great for beginners because you don’t have to worry about matching). They are often sold in complimentary color lots and sizes so that you can just pick up a handful and string them up.

This particular assortment pictured above is from Fire Mountain and made by glass bead artist David Christensen. The package scheme is called “Crayon” and features between 280 and 580 glass cane beads per pound.

We’ve talked about the Renegade Craft Fair before so if anything this is just reminder that the New York show is taking place in Brooklyn, New York this coming weekend. Since it’s too late to signup to be a vendor the best you can do if you’re a jewelry maker is head down to the event to check it out in case you want to apply next year. However, if you happen to live in Chicago, they are now taking applications for the 4th annual one in that city which will take place September 16, 17 in Wicker Park from 11am-6pm. The deadline for that one is July 1.

Here’s the basic details for next week’s New York Renegade Craft Fair:

Brooklyn Renegade Craft Fair
Saturday- Sunday June 17 - 18
11AM - 6PM
McCarren Park
N. 12th St and Bedford Ave. in Williamsburg

There are a TON of big name sponsors for the event, including Venus, ReadyMade and Bust Magazine. It has really blossomed since it first started up in 2003, with over 200 vendors.

Both fairs are “juried” craft shows and the application fee for the Chicago one now stands at $210.

You can visit their site at:

www.renegadecraft.com