A quick post to remark at how far I’ve come since I began making jewelry.
Photos don’t lie. At least mine don’t.
The very first piece of gemstone jewelry I made.
I spent some time organizing the Photos library on my Mac. I’ve got 18,000+ photos and I’m constantly trying to delete the crap and tag/sort/organize what’s left. A while back, I created a folder called Jewelry (All) and I periodically drag all photos in any way related to my jewelry making into that folder. Today, I scrolled back to the earliest photos in there and found an image of my very first piece.
Ick.
The stone was a piece of labradorite that I got for about a buck in Quartzsite. The wire was round silver-plated craft wire. I made this piece after watching this video on YouTube. Although I was impressed with this video back in January when I started down this path, I do not recommend it now. What should have tipped me off was her use of hardware store pliers, which really make a mess of the metal. If you’re interested at all in making jewelry with wire and stones, watch it just to get a really good idea of why “wire wrap” has a bad reputation in the jewelry world. There’s a lot of crap out there and this video will teach you how to make some more.
If you’re looking for a good how-to video for making wire-framed gemstone jewelry, check out this one by OxanaCrafts. Oxana got me started wrapping my bails and I actually find it difficult to make a piece without a wrapped bail. She uses a thicker gauge copper in all of her work — 20 or 21 gauge vs the 22 or 24 gauge mostly sterling silver I use — and I don’t think she’s quite as particular as I am about her stones. For me, the wire work is a vehicle for delivering a beautiful stone; her work, like so many other “wire wrap artists,” is more about the wire work than the stone. Different philosophies, and that’s okay.
As I talk about in other posts tagged jewelry, I’ve come a long way since then. Getting a lesson from a real jewelry maker really helped. Watching a few better tutorials on YouTube helped me develop and fine-tune my own style. The rest was all practice, practice, practice.
At this point, I think I’ve made about 250 to 300 pendants. In the beginning, it took about two hours to make each pendant. I can now knock an easy one off in about 30 minutes. (“Easy” is determined primarily by the size and shape of the stone.)
I sell my work primarily at Pybus Public Market in Wenatchee, WA. I have a “day table” there three days a week: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I’m one of several artisans that come regularly to sell their work — and the closer we get to Christmas, the more of us there are. I get lots of complements from people who actually bother to stop and take a closer look at my work. And that’s nice. But what’s really nice is when another jewelry artist stops by and complements me. That happens more often than I thought it might.
When people ask me how long I’ve been doing this, I ask them to guess. Guesses have ranged from “a few years” to “15 or 20 years.” I have to say that I’m pretty tickled about that. I don’t ever tell them the truth. Instead, I say something evasive or vague like, “Not as long as you might think” or “It’s been a while now.” You’d be surprised how easy it is to get away with something like that. People don’t even realize it when you don’t give them a definitive answer for a question.
My work will soon be in two galleries: Two Rivers Art Gallery in Wenatchee, which has carried my work since this past summer, and Gallery One in Ellensburg, where I’ve participated in an artist event and will be teaching gemstone framing this coming Sunday.
I also sell online: https://squareup.com/store/MLJewelryDesigns
I should mention here that I’ve also branched off into other wire work. I make earrings, bracelets, and even rings, which I can sell for (mostly) less than my pendants. I don’t enjoy doing any of those nearly as much as I like making the gemstone pendants, though. The pendants give me an excuse to buy stones and I really do have a stone addiction to feed. Besides, do you know how tedious it is to hand cut, shape, hammer, and join 13 identical pieces of wire to make a bracelet chain?
This is my most recently completed pendant, which I made yesterday. It’s a tiny, partially translucent piece of dendritic agate, framed with 24 gauge square and half-round sterling silver wire. Tiny pieces are tough for me — my hands are not small — and I’m extremely pleased with the way this one came out. It’s headed for Gallery One in Ellensburg where I hope it makes a nice Christmas present for someone who loves stones as much as I do.
Looking at the photos in that Jewelry (All) album gives me a chance to see my progress over time. But what was also interesting to me yesterday was looking at some recent work posted by my mentor, Dorothy, on Facebook. I can see the similarities, but I can also see where our styles have diverged. Back in January, when she taught me to frame gemstones the way she does, my first piece could have passed for one of her simple ones. Now they’re very different.
Yes, I’ve come a remarkably long way since January 2018. And what I’m really pleased about is how it hasn’t gotten boring yet. This might just be my retirement career.
