Jewelry Making: How Far I’ve Come

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.

First Piece
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.

A good starter video

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?

Dendritic Agate Pendant
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.

Polished Stones from Slabs

More polished stones. (Yes, I’m addicted.)

I just wanted to take a moment to share two photos of stones I polished into cabochons posed right beside the slabs I cut them from.

Wild Horse Picture Jasper
Wild Horse Picture Jasper.

Ahwanee Jasper.
Ahwanee Jasper. I have two slabs and I made two cuts with my tile saw to remove a portion of one slab for this cabochon.

A slab, in case you’re wondering, is a slice of a rock. These were thin — about 1/8 inch. I prefer them thicker — maybe 1/4 to 3/8 inch — so I can get taller, more rounded cabochons. You need a slab saw — a large saw capable of cutting through stone — to make slabs. I don’t have one but I have a friend who does. He’s been cutting slabs from local obsidian and petrified wood that I gave him in exchange for jewelry-making classes for his family. I’ll show off finished cabochons from that soon.

These finished stones and remaining slabs are for sale. I’ll be adding them to my ML Jewelry Designs website and its online store soon. I just need to get better photos of them.

Making Art From Nature

Taking jewelry making to the next level.

I’m feeling rather tickled right now. I just finished this sterling silver and Dorset Marble pendant.

If you follow this blog, you might be rolling your eyes right now. Big deal, you’re probably saying. Another pendant.

But this one is different.

You see, this is a stone I found on my visit to Dorset Quarry in Vermont earlier this month. I figure that an old marble quarry might have a few small pieces of marble lying around and I was right. I picked up about ten thin pieces to take home with me.

Then, yesterday, I took three of those pieces into my shop and used my CabKing to shape and polish them into cabochons.

And then today I picked the largest of the three marble cabs and wrapped it in sterling silver to make this pendant.

This photo gives you an idea of the stages of the creation process, from dirty stone to finished pendant:

And that’s why I’m tickled. I took something I found in the dirt on the other side of the country and turned it into a beautiful piece of jewelry.

First Impressions of Making Cabochons with the CabKing 6

As a ghost from my past used to say, any job is easy when you have the right tools.

One of the things that has been frustrating me lately in my jewelry-making endeavors is my inability to fine-tune the stones I acquire so they better meet my standards. For example, I bought a bunch of cabochons from a dealer in India and they all arrived with unpolished backs. While that’s acceptable if you plan to set the stones with something behind them, I don’t. I want the entire stone polished.

So I tracked down a local lapidary, Gary, who does it as a sort of retirement hobby. He polished the backs of the stones and charged me a nominal fee. It was neat to watch him do it on his cab making machine. But when I got another set of stones from another dealer and realized how much work they’d need to be usable, I realized that I’d soon become a nuisance to Gary.

Add to that a load of local petrified wood and obsidian that an orchard-owning friend of mine, Donn, was trying to unload. As is, no one would touch them — and I must have asked a half-dozen rock people. But with a little cutting and polishing, they might be salable — or at least usable in the jewelry I make.

And, of course, I was making fused glass cabochons in my kiln from repurposed wine bottles and they needed polishing to make them usable.

So it made sense to buy a cab machine.

At least that’s what I told myself.

It was a big expenditure and I sat on the fence for a few weeks before pulling the trigger. I needed a birthday present, I reasoned. There were only two things in the running: an inflatable Hobie pedal kayak that could accept a sail kit — yes, they do make things like that these days — or the CabKing 6 cabbing machine. Believe it or not, the CabKing was about $1,000 cheaper. I reasoned that I could use it for my jewelry business and, thus, write it off. That would reduce the cost by my current year tax rate — as if that really mattered. The fact that I needed a birthday present was enough to get me to buy it. (Maybe I’ll get that kayak next year.)

CabKing 6
The CabKing has 6 grinding/polishing wheels and other features that make it a great tool for making cabochons.

I should mention here that a lapidary friend of mine that I know from Quartzsite, AZ, John, told me not to buy the CabKing. He’s a Diamond Pacific dealer and that’s what he uses. He told me he could get me a deal on a comparable Diamond Pacific machine that had only been used about 10 hours in one of the stone-cutting classes he leads. But even with the discount, the machine would cost about $500 more. And I really liked the way the CabKing handled the water used to cool the stones as you grind and polish: it always puts fresh water on the wheels so there’s no chance of contamination from earlier stages in the grinding/polishing process.

Gary said the CabKing was a good machine but it had a tendency to splash a lot of water.

It came last week. So did some stones for tumbling and polishing. I played around with it. I was surprised about how easy it was to use to shape stones.

I had some trouble getting fine scratches out of my finished stones. I attended YouTube University for about an hour or two and watched a bunch of cab-making videos, including this good one. I soon realized that the scratches had to come out very early in the process — on my machine, by the time I’d run the stone through the third wheel, a 280-grit diamond resin pre-polish wheel. I took the stones back down to my shop and reworked them. The results were very satisfactory.

First Batch of Stones
This is the first batch of stones I polished: petrified wood, sodalite, and a mystery stone I got from a friend’s garden.

I found that the petrified wood I’d gotten from Donn polished up beautifully.

Yesterday evening, I gave it another go with five pieces of stone: rose quartz, hawk’s eye, local obsidian, local petrified wood, fused wine bottle glass. In the afternoon, the driveway in front of my shop is in the shade and, with a nice little breeze blowing, it can be quite cool, even if it’s hot in the sun. So I wheeled the machine out — I installed it on one of the many wheeled carts I have accumulated — put a stool in front of it, and got to work. Two hours later, I had five decent cabochons.

To show them off better, I made a little video this morning. Check it out:

I’m learning a lot about stones and how the hardness affects how easy they are to cut and polish. The hawk’s eye is a mix of soft (tan) and hard (dark gray) stone and I have to be careful not to press too hard on the soft side. It doesn’t polish very well. The rose quartz and petrified wood polish very nicely. The obsidian had imperfections that turned into pits in the finished surface. And the glass polishes nicely, although fuse lines in the glass appear almost as cracks in the finished piece.

I’m starting to wonder what basalt, which we have no shortage of here, would look like polished. (You can bet I’m going to try it.)

I bought some slabs of outback jasper, bumble bee jasper, and moss agate to work with. I figure that each of these small slabs should yield 2 to 3 cabochons. The bumble bee jasper, which is a soft stone, is pitted and I’ll likely try stabilizing it before cutting and polishing it. I’m hoping that process fills the pits with a clear epoxy that’ll make it possible to get a good polish. We’ll see.

Slabs
I bought these three slabs to try to make cabochons. I’m just hoping that my tile cutter can cut them into pieces without breaking them.

I think what I like most about this is how much I’ve learned about stones and lapidary work since January. (Yes, it’s just been since January that this became my latest hobby-gone-wild.) I love being creative in ways other than with words. I love being able to share nature’s beauty in a way that people can appreciate. And it’s nice getting paid to make the things I make.

Some Notes on My Jewelry Business

Surprisingly successful.

I started creating wire-wrapped jewelry back in January of this year. I’ve come a long way.

Getting Serious and Developing a Style

Labradorite Wrapped in Silver
My first wire-wrapped jewelry piece. Don’t laugh; I was proud of it back then. And I still think those are excellent swirls.

My first attempts were predictably amateurish. Cringe-worthy, in fact, when looking back on them. I learned from watching a few YouTube videos — which, in hindsight, I now realize were the wrong YouTube videos. But I had a lot of positive feedback from the people who saw my work, including some professionals. (I was in Quartzsite, AZ at the time and literally surrounded by rock hounds and lapidaries.) I realize now that they were probably just being nice. That early stuff was gawdawful, although I subsequently did manage to sell every single piece. (Go figure, eh?)

Montana Agate
Finishing this first piece in sterling silver was when I think I started getting serious. That was a really beautiful stone. It was one of the first pieces I sold.

In mid January, I got a lesson from a friend who is one of those professionals. Dorothy guided me to create my first piece in sterling silver. I think this was the point at which I realized that if I wanted to acquire nice stones, I needed to get serious about creating nice jewelry with them. The things I learned really helped put me on the right path.

At around the same time, I found another YouTube wire-wrap artist who showed me additional techniques, such as wire-wrapped bails, that I’d incorporate into my own work to develop my own style. That style now includes hand-formed swirls at the top of each piece, an occasional drop-down wire or two that end in tiny loops, and a pair of tiny loops at the back of the piece.

Since January, I’ve created well over 100 pieces of wire-wrapped gemstone jewelry, most of which are wrapped with silver. I’ve shifted slowly from the inexpensive stones I acquired in Quartzsite to more exotic, higher quality stones I get from gemstone dealers and at gem shows.

It’s All about the Stones

For me, it’s all about the stones. I’ve always liked beautiful stones but never had a reason to acquire them. Making jewelry gives me an excuse to buy stones. I put them on display in cases so I can look at them and choose one for my next piece. It seems silly to folks who don’t have a thing for stones, but if you do, I’m sure you know exactly what I mean.

Of course, these stones aren’t cheap and I really didn’t want to continue funding this — dare I say it? — obsession with stones. So I decided to try to sell my jewelry.

The Birth of ML Jewelry Designs

I did a few things pretty much all at once:

  • I came up with a company name. I needed a name so I could identify the company. I’m afraid I didn’t get very creative. I put about 10 minutes of thought into it. ML Jewelry Designs.
  • I registered a domain name. Honestly, I don’t know why so many businesses put their eggs in the Facebook basket. There’s nothing that gives a company more legitimacy than an address on the web. So MLJewelryDesigns.com was born.
  • I set up a Facebook page. (I later pretty much abandoned it when I decided that I’d had enough of Facebook. I did the same for my other company, Flying M Air, LLC.)
  • I set up a Twitter account for the company. I wanted a way to tweet only company news, including photos and links to new pieces.
  • I registered my business with the state. I knew I’d have to collect and pay sales tax.
  • I built a website with WordPress. What else was I going to use?
  • I started photographing my jewelry and adding it with descriptions to the website.
  • I set up WordPress to automatically tweet posts about new pieces.
  • I set up Square to accept credit card payments and, more importantly, an online store.
  • I designed and bought materials for unique packaging that included clear pillow boxes and card inserts.

All this took less than a week. Maintaining the website and online store to add jewelry pieces would take a few hours every week.

I got my first online sale within a week. It was to a Twitter friend who lived overseas. (Thank you, mdy!) As I packed up the piece, I found myself kind of sad to see it go. But I felt less sad when I saw the money in my bank account and placed another order for stones. It’s all about the stones!

Selling in Person

The one thing I knew for sure is that the photos of my work that I was putting online did not do the pieces justice. They look way better in real life. That was confirmed when I showed photos to several shop owners and got a lukewarm response. (I don’t do that anymore. I tell people I don’t have photos with me.) One of those shop owners saw them in person yesterday and was very impressed.

I knew that Pybus Public Market, a local shop/restaurant/farmer’s market venue on the Wenatchee waterfront, had “day tables” for vendors. The rates were affordable. Some friends of mine were already selling handmade furniture and other woodworking items there on Saturdays. I decided too see if I could get a table there.

AtPybus
My first table at Pybus Public Market. I now use a black tablecloth and have really improved my display.

It was remarkably easy, especially in the spring when there wasn’t much of a demand for space. I set up one Saturday for the first time. My table consisted of several jewelry display busts with pendants hung around them and black burlap-covered boards with the pendants on display. I had the stones on display, too, all priced so folks could buy stones to take with them or have me wrap for them.

And I sold three pieces of jewelry.

Now that might not seem like a lot, but I’m not making cheap stuff. My prices range from $49 to $59 for most pieces, with a few cheaper ones (clearance items and quick wraps for folks on a budget) and a few more expensive ones (especially lately with the high quality stones I’ve been acquiring). The cost of the table was cheap enough that if I sold just one piece, I’d be ahead of the game. I considered three a good day.

I came back other Saturdays with mixed results. None of the Saturdays were bad, but some were better than others.

After talking to other vendors, I decided to try Fridays. With the exception of one day that no one did well — they didn’t even charge our table fees that day — I did fine.

Saturdays got busier when the Wenatchee Valley Farmer’s Market started up outside. That didn’t necessarily mean more people were spending money indoors, though. It was hit or miss, but never a complete failure. It did start getting better when the Seattle weekenders started coming in.

When the Wednesday evening farmer’s market started last week, I started coming on Wednesdays, too. I sold two pieces the first time — and I had to leave at 2 because of weather. (I’m still cherry drying pilot.) I sold four this past Friday. And I sold five yesterday.

Although I sit there making jewelry as I chat with shoppers, vendors, and employees, I often sell more pieces than I can make in the same time. Sometimes the jewelry I’m making is a special order for someone who really liked a stone in one of my cases and wanted a jewelry piece made from it.

I get lots of complements from everyone who stops to look, even if they don’t buy. (After all, I know that not everyone is interested in wearing a pretty rock on a cord around their neck.)

And a shopper yesterday, as I gave her my usual spiel — “I buy the stones already cut and polished. I do all the wire work to make the pendants and earrings in sterling silver, copper, or both.” — said, “I know. My friend told me about you.”

Whoa. Word of mouth. How cool is that?

The Gallery

Of course, a better way to sell my jewelry was to have someone else sell it for me. So I continued looking for places that might take my work.

I quickly learned not to use the phrase “wire wrap” when describing my jewelry to a shop owner. And not to show photos. The best way to approach a shop owner was to go in when it wasn’t crowded with my case of finished pieces.

You see, I store all my pieces in a glass-topped jewelry display case when it’s not on display on the labeled board at Pybus. The case has dividers and each piece fits into a slot on black velvet. It looks neat and impressive.

Native Silver
This piece of Native Silver sold at the Two Rivers Art Gallery last week.

And that’s what I took into the Two Rivers Art Gallery when I went to ask if they’d display them — despite the fact that the manager told me they had no room for me when I called him on the phone. They were suitably impressed and they made room. I’ve got a whole shelf in a locked case in one of the front rooms. And last week, I got a check for the sale of two pieces of jewelry, including my most expensive piece (Native Silver), which sold for $89.

But I’m not done. I’m hoping to get my jewelry into a handful of other stores in the area and beyond. (If you’re reading this and am interested in helping me sell my work in your store, please get in touch.)

Looking Ahead

I’m always looking for ways to improve my display with the goal of increasing sales at events.

Jewelry on Display
Here’s my current display board with some of the cabochon cases in front of them. (And yes, it’s a terrible photo.)

Over time, I modified my display to include a bigger board, labeled hooks that included the name of the stone and the price (so people wouldn’t have to fumble with the tag or unnecessarily touch anything), and lights. There was an easel to lift and tilt the board without having to depend on boxes behind it. My selling junk (iPad, Square, packaging, etc.) is hidden behind the easel, leaving the table neat. The three gemstone display boxes, which have plexiglas tops, are unsnapped so they can be easily opened to remove a stone for inspection by someone who is seriously interested, while keeping kids and light-fingered passersby from touching or taking home souvenirs. Not perfect, but better.

I’m also looking into other venues, specifically one where artwork is displayed and sold. I have a lead on an “Artisan’s Booth” at the Grant County Fair in August and am still sitting on the fence about it. I suspect I’ll give it a try just to see what it’s like, even though I don’t think it’s the kind of crowd my work would appeal to.

I’d like to get into some events in a metropolitan area like Seattle where people are willing to spend more money.

Meanwhile, I’m buying more rocks. I can’t tell you how many complements I get on my selection of stones.

Shiva Shell
The second Shiva shell piece I made yesterday sold, too.

And since I’m starting to learn what sells best, I’m making sure I always have pieces using those stones in stock. Kingman turquoise, Shiva shell, rose quartz, lapis lazuli, and K2 are nearly impossible to keep in stock. On Thursday night, I made a Shiva shell piece and it sold on Friday. On Saturday, I made one and it sold before I was finished. I made a second one and it sold before I packed up. I have one on order for my best customer and need to make at least two more — one for the gallery and one for Wednesday at Pybus. So you can guess what I’ll be doing this evening — or this afternoon when the wind invariably kicks up. (What is it with the wind this year?)

Black Pyrite
This little piece of black pyrite came out a lot better than I expected it to and is currently my favorite piece.

I need to stress that I enjoy making the jewelry. I find it strangely relaxing and rewarding, especially when a piece comes out better than I expected it to. I’ve never felt so creative before. Artistic, even. And although I’m kind of sad to see a piece I really like get sold, I’m also thrilled every time I make a sale. I’m creating something visual (as opposed to the millions of words I’ve sold as a writer) that people want to buy. How cool is that?

So at this point, I think it’s safe to say that this is not just a passing phase for me. I feel invested and rewarded and even still excited about this work. I’m looking forward to continuing and improving my technique and style for years to come.