I Started Making Jewelry

Posted by Angelique on January 25, 2009

Right before Christmas, I decided I wanted to make jewelry to give as gifts. I started making my Mom’s bracelet. She is a beader/designer, so I thought she might appreciate my efforts to try and make my own stuff. That’s how it started. Here is a look at the finished bracelet and earrings set:

It was my first try at stringing jewelry, and I didn’t want to ask my Mom for advice since the gift was meant for her. So with my little bit of experience I had working with seed beads, I gave it a go. The bracelet is made with 4mm cube beads and 3mm metal beads. I used head pins and silver ear wires to make the earrings. I was actually proud that I was able to do it without her help.

It wasn’t until later on that week when I was making another bracelet that she told me about making knots in the thread before I cut it. She also showed me how to make a half-hitch knot. I had never heard of it, but I’m glad she showed me. I thought stringing was exactly like working with seed beads where you just pull the thread through the beads a few more times. That would have been embarrassing to have all my bracelets falling apart after a few weeks or so. LoL

I ended up taking my Mom’s bracelet apart and re-doing it, but that’s okay. You live, you learn, right? It was good practice, and it all worked out okay. I was able to keep her from finding out the bracelet was hers until Christmas. At least, if she knew, she didn’t say anything. And when she opened it, she said she liked it a lot.

About a week or so after I had finished that set, my son told me that they had picked the students for the gift exchange in his class. He got a girl named Cassandra, so I decided I would venture out and make a bracelet for her too.

This one was a memory wire bracelet with 6mm acrylic beads and in the middle of the bracelet I used plastic letter beads to put a heart, then her name, and another heart. It was my first memory wire bracelet, but my mom was there to help with that one if I needed it. Tommy said that he couldn’t tell if she liked it or not, because none of the girls in class said anything or made any kind of facial expression when they opened their gifts. Well, at least I tried to make her something nice. *shrugs shoulders*

I ended up making all four gift bracelet sets. One for my Mom, my Grandma, my Granny, and my Aunt, and they all said they loved them. I think they did. Just look at the look on my Grandma’s face when she opened hers. LoL

I also created five more sets besides the ones as gifts. I don’t have pictures of all of them, or of the other three gift sets, but as I get them, I will make sure to add a blog. The reason for the lack of pictures is that we took all the sets over to my Granny’s house so she could see them, and while we were there, another one of my aunts ended up buying five of the nine sets, including one of the sets I had made for my Aunt! It was all good though, we still had plenty of beads, so I just made another one almost exactly like it, and I finished it in plenty of time for Christmas.

All in all, not bad for my first week of wire work and stringing.