How easy is it to make jewellery?

Well like all hobbies and crafts we start out at the very beginning, its a very good place to start! ( are you singing along? apologies if this now becomes an ear worm all day 🤣). Jewellery making has lots of levels and mediums (specialist areas of the craft) and each medium has levels from easy up to advanced.  What ever your first piece of jewellery you make this will be your starting point or beginner project.  Now you might be thinking well this is a stupid thing to say? but there isn’t a rule book in jewellery making that you have to follow to step up the levels, you can go in at any level and start hence your very own starting point.  The first step in becoming a jewellery maker is to choose a piece of jewellery that you would love to make, this will help you keep your vision while making it.

But I am not a designer!!

Of course you are!! Everyone is a designer, we design every day of our life but we probably don’t think about it as designing.  When you decide what clothes you are wearing that day or for a special occasion you are designing, when you buy a rug for your living room you are designing, when you are choosing the colour of paint for your bedroom you are designing. We just never label it as this.  In fact let’s do a little experiment imagine you are going out to a job interview, go to your clothes and pick out an outfit to wear.  Now just flip the narrative and instead of you picking your outfit you are now backstage at London fashion week and you are designing an outfit for a model to strut their stuff down the run way! See there is no difference you are both designing. 

So where is a good place to start?

As we discussed earlier it all depends on what floats your boat, but a really great quick piece of jewellery to make and is bang on trend is an elegant stretch beaded bracelet. These bracelets don’t need any tools to make, are in nearly all jewellery designers collections and the best thing is no clasps to do up!  They can be made with any 2 holed beads and although they are usually found made with round beads they can be made with different shapes.

You will need a good quality jewellery elastic which can be bought in different thicknesses and colours. I personally prefer to use one called Stretch Magic in a 0.5mm gauge in clear. You can get this from on line retailers such as Cookson Gold and Amazon. 

But you still haven’t told me how to make it!

I have got you covered. On my YouTube channel I have an in depth video on how to create these versatile bracelets and show you how to finish them with a fabulous professional finish, no one will know its your first go at making jewellery

So thats it you are now on your way to becoming a jewellery designer 🥳

Once you have made your first piece of jewellery you will be hooked and you might want to start making different types of jewellery, for most of them you will need jewellery making tools and again you might not know what tools to buy and what they are used for.  I’ve got you don’t worry I have written a blog all about the basic tools you need, you can read that here https://relaxncraft.com/getting-started-with-jewellery-making-tools-edition/

If you are itching to get going and you need a jewellery making tool starter kit then I have a wonderful kit that has the basic pliers and a wonderful beading mat to work on and finally a large tool bag to keep them in check out the tool section on the website https://relaxncraft.com/product/jewellery-making-starter-kit/

Where can I get inspiration?

To be honest once you start looking inspiration is everywhere, looking in fashion/lifestyle magazines, social media, one of my favourites is people watching just looking at what people are wearing. But probably the easiest is to look at search engines and search jewellery types/jewellery mediums. The best search engine in my opinion is Pinterest. Not only is it very visual but you can make boards (like a mood board) and pin pictures you find to them, making it easy to categorise your pins and ideas. You can find my Pinterest profile here

The most important thing to remember is jewellery making is a lovely mindful/relaxing hobby if the piece of jewellery you are making is frustrating you and you are not enjoying the challenge, have a look for another jewellery making medium or style to make there are so many out there I am sure you will find one that you love.

Fleur xx