I am a total student of the internet. Over the past 10 years I’ve learned everything from HTML to soldering just by Googling questions, reading blogs, and watching YouTube videos. I love learning new skills but I hate going to classes. One of my favorite things to do on a weekend is sit in my pjs and discover new techniques to make things, especially jewelry. So when I saw the announcement that one of my favorite companies, For the Makers, was coming out with a book I was so excited.
I’ve been a subscriber to For the Makers for over two years and the boxes are always amazing. I love the thought and care for detail that their team puts into every box. One of my favorite things about subscribing is that I learn names for skills and materials that I can’t teach myself from Googling. This is the same thing for their new book.
I might find a piece of jewelry that I really admire but I’d have no idea what the materials to make are called. (And the book has an awesome section of sourcing tips, especially if you’re in NYC.) For example this necklace below is so simple and pretty but I had no idea that the thick flat wire was called bezel wire or that there was a taxonomy for the hardness of wire types. Because of the book I was able to order some silver bezel wire from Ebay.
The first necklace I made from the tips in the Make a Statement book was the woven collar necklace.
I bought my brass hanging elements from Ebay and I bought the green glass and jade beads for the necklace from this amazing shop called Leekan Designs right north of Chinatown. Even though a lot of stuff in this shop is a bit pricey, you can find something that is affordable and it has a great staff. I always end up talking to one girl who works there about beads, rocks, or dogs.
Following the directions in the book, I used a bunch of chains and findings that I had around. (I buy up lots of broken jewelry on Ebay and use the elements to make new jewelry.)
Using my dress form was incredibly helpful to get the chain and braided fabric to lay properly in the way that it would around a neck.
After I had the chains in place I started stitching the beads to the chains and braided fabric.
The finished necklace!
If you’re interested in learning how to make your own jewelry, I can’t recommend this book enough. So excited for Janet, Katie, and the FTM team! 🙂
totally get where you're coming from with the Google searching, so frustrating when you're looking for something and can't find it because you don't know the jargon. Doubly annoying when you're studying and you think you've made an amazing discovery that no-one's ever written about before… then you find you were just looking wrong and there's hundreds of publications about the exact thing you thought you 'discovered' -_-