Making your own jewelry is a fun and profitable way to make extra money. Many stores sell beads, clasps, and kits for designing your own jewelry. Older pieces can also be found at yard sales and taken apart to make stunning new pieces. This article will give you some ideas for designing your own pieces of jewelry.
Use a polishing cloth to keep your jewelry clean and free from damage. A polishing cloth is a very gentle way to get a good shine on all your pieces. Use the two-sided cloth to polish your jewelry as if you were cleaning glass. Use a two-sided cleaning cloth, one for polishing and one for shining.
Stay away from cheap glass jewelry. Borosilicate and lampwork glass jewelry are a new rage. Many styles of this type of jewelry are popping up in malls all over the country. However the products labeled as high quality lampwork glass are nothing more than cheap imported glass goods. Such glass products are usually not kiln annealed which means that there is a high chance that the product can shatter, cutting your skin while you’re wearing it. Purchase glass jewelry from local artisans or reliable vendors that you know are selling quality products. If it’s too cheap, you know it is too good to be true. Good glass costs anywhere from the low forty dollar range up into the hundreds.
Buying jewelry for someone else can be challenging. Look at what they choose for themselves and try to find something similar. Avoid sized items like rings unless you know what their size is. If you guess, what’s going to happen if you guess wrong? It may help to go window shopping with them and see if they mention a certain store, brand, or even a specific item.
IF you’re thinking of buying your child jewelry, a charm bracelet is an excellent way to go. Add a new charm at every milestone, such as, his or her first lost tooth. When your child grows up, he or she will have a special story that is attached with each charm.
Question any piece of jewelry that is so cheap it’s too good to be true. Look at any gemstones to ensure they don’t have large inclusions in them. Look for stamps on the metal to prove that it is what it’s claiming to be. If someone takes offense to your double checking authenticity, they’re probably lying.
To make sure your jewelry makes you look great, wear jewelry that compliments your skin tone. If you have a cool skin tone, choose jewelry with a silver tone. When wearing gemstones, try pearls or jewel-toned stones. To compliment a warm skin tone, wear gold jewelry and pieces with earth tones. Coral and turquoise also look great on those with warm skin.
If you don’t know the ring size of the person you’re buying jewelry for, just get the size they have in stock – DON’T resize it based on your guess! You don’t want to be messing with a ring over and over again or you could affect it’s hardiness. When you give the ring to the recipient, let them know you will pay to have it resized.
Use a cloth dampened with a solution of water and a few drops of dish-washing liquid to clean your pearls. Lightly rub each pearl with the cloth, and allow them to air-dry. Never soak pearls, as doing so can cause massive damage to the integrity of the gem. Keeping your pearls clean ensures a long life for them.
As stated at the beginning of the article, making your own jewelry can be a fun and profitable past time. Finding pieces to design your jewelry with, can be just as fun as making the jewelry its self. Hopefully this article has given you some great ideas, and you will be on your way to designing unique, one-of-a-kind pieces of jewelry in no time.