Monday, January 12, 2009

Jewelry making

So, in July or August I went to a cool bead store called Splendor in the Grass, got caught up in the thrill of beads, but a totally expensive necklace, a bunch o beads to make a necklace for my mom and one for me. This is how I spend money I don't have. sigh.

Ok, so at any rate, I failed to do anything with the beads. My friend, Roseanne, actually made the necklace for my mom. (It was two necklaces that could be worn separately or together. Very cool.)

I finally attended a bead making class Saturday morning. There were six of us. I was definitely the youngest one by a good bit.

First, I would like to discuss the supplies. There were quite a few required.

1. Some kind of pliers. Very specialized and absolutely important.
2. Pointy thing for pulling out "mystery knots". Turns out this actually is important especially if you are prone to bad knots.
3. Small pointy scissors. Very specialized and so terribly important. (Pretty certain small scissors can be bought anywhere, but maybe that's just me.)
4. Another pair of pliers. Also terribly important, blah, blah, blah
5. Two wooden sticks used for "stretching" the string. Absolutely fabulous and a must for everyone to own. Sigh.
6. Six ft of string post stretching and with one knot. I am very good at knot making I would like to add. I feel it is because as a young child I had deep love for buttons. So much so that I would sew buttons onto clothing for hours on end. If you don't believe me, ask my mother. She'll tell you.
7. So small you can hardly seem them . . . even in reality. The little hooky things that go on either end of the bracelet to hold the thing together.
8. Pages and pages of instructions. Most of which even after the class I don't think make a lot of sense.

So, as you can see, the class seems to require a lot of specialized stuff. I think that is tiring. I know it is in the store's best interest to suck us in and get us to buy a lot of extra supplies etc, but first, I'd really like to determine if it is something I really want to do. Know what I mean?

The knotting process is the basic knot but it has to be very tight and right against each bead. See exhibit 1. I had to draw attention to the specialized gold small sharp scissors because although I was fairly certain I had a pair of sharp small scissors at home, I couldn't resist purchasing the pretty gold ones for myself. Besides, if I ever decide to poke my eyes out, this is the pair I'll be using because they are really, really sharp. I had to get a close up shot of the string with knots. It was a two hour class and basically the entire time was spent on learning how to knot properly. Then, voila it was done. The beautiful bracelet. I would like to add a small note at the bottom. The entire reason I took this class was so that I could make a necklace just like the one I had bought. When I went in the store in December I clearly told them that is what I wanted to do. So, when in class I asked how to I make an endless necklace that doesn't have a clasp or anything, I was informed that she couldn't teach me that because that was taught in the NEXT class. I would need to take the next class to be able to do that. To say the least, I was pissed. I spent a ton of money on the stupid beads. I paid to take the stupid class. I bought SOME of their stupid supplies. I went ahead and bought some stupid clasps that can make it somewhat endless since I don't know how to do exactly what I want. Bastards want even more money?????

So, I studied other necklaces and I think I have figured a way to make it work. I'll let you know how it goes.

1 comment:

  1. good luck. I gotta nothin' in the way of jewelry making experience.

    ReplyDelete