I would like to share with you and hope not to bore you, with my story as it relates to jewelry making. I hope you will enjoy reading it.
I'm not really sure exactly which year it was that I began the craft of making jewelry. I suppose it was early, at an age in elementary school. It could have been in an art class, Girl Scouts, or just playing around in Mom's sewing room. What I do remember for sure, is learning the craft of Macreme, and making a necklace that I wore for so many years that when it finally wore out, I was really bummed because I couldn't find the materials to make another! It was during this time that I also created endless keychains from a variety of items. I remember that necklace especially because all my friends wanted to know where they could get one!
I've always been fascinated by jewelry. When I was 12, my mom finally let me get my ears pierced. I was so excited! She was petrified! She was so afraid that one of the "mean" girls at school would yank the earrings out of my ears and scar me for life! Boy, were those the days!
Once a month or so, my mom would take me and my other 2 sisters to the local department store and buy us each a new pair of shiny earrings. We couldn't wait to get a new pair of pretties! I remember we always had to get genuine 14k gold because my mom was afraid we would get some kind of infection if we got anything less. Now even at that young age, I always preferred the look of silver, but since mom was buying, gold it was!
A few years later, I began to earn my own money through babysitting and much to my mom's horror, I began spending some of this money at, of all places, K-Mart to buy some inexpensive earrings. Now this stuff was much cheaper than what I usually had, but I didn't care, because I could buy lots of it for the same price as the department store!
One of my favorite pair of earrings, of which to this day I wish I still had, was a little pair of yellow bells. They were some kind of metal and when I walked down the halls at school, they made a little ringing sound. This was the 70's, and I'm sure these are almost nowhere to be found today! (If anyone out there knows where I can get them, I'd love to hear from you! Hey, I'd even be satisfied just to see a photo of them!)
Now, even at a young age, I was very careful with my ears. I always took great care to be sure and sanitize any new earrings I purchased for at least 24 hrs in rubbing alcohol, and I can honestly say to this day, I have never experienced any kind of infection due to my earrings. I'm also lucky enough not to have any allergies. It was probably because of my due diligence, that my mom soon enough got over her fears and finally made peace with my purchasing my own earrings. She still took me and my sisters out though, on occasion to buy us the nice stuff, which as any teenager, I truly didn't fully appreciate the value!
I recall a day, actually many days, when one of my pretties broke. I found myself going through my parents various tools desperately trying to find something, anything, that I could use to fix the jewelry. That experience taught me that I could take broken jewelry and make new stuff from it! What a discovery this was for me at the age of 13, and little did I know, I had just scratched the surface.
Many years later, I became serious about making my own jewelry. Over the years, I've gone back and forth about my favorite metal, gold vs silver. In high school, silver was the only metal I'd wear. Later, in the 80's, I loved gold. Silver is my current favorite. I would guess that's because it looks so pretty with my favorite color which is blue and just gorgeous with my birthstone of aquamarine.
I will in my next post dicuss how I became involved with selling my craft and also talk about making the plunge into selling jewelry supplies.
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