I think that one of my favorite crafts is jewelry making. Beads should be part of any well-equipped jewelry making kit. I love the choice of styles that jewelry making allows you to try. The range of materials that you can use for jewelry making also means that their possible uses are limited only by my imagination. Even though I was not a particularly experienced craftsperson I soon found that I enjoyed jewelry making and created wonderfully original jewelry. Of course, I now wish that I was capable of far more intricate jewelry making but at least I am always improving on the ones I made before!

I enjoy jewelry making using a variety of different materials. It is fun to look at what I have handy that I can convert into pretty jewelry. One of my favorites is using strips of colored paper for paper mache jewelry. My kids love tearing pictures out of glossy magazines and we try jewelry making together, well, almost! They prefer to move straight to the decorating stage and I have found that dried macaroni makes an ideal bead. The tubes of pasta have a ready made hole for threading and can be painted easily. We also use clay quite a lot when jewelry making, probably because kids enjoy molding the shapes. I have to take over the baking part but once
that is done they can decorate and varnish their creations and continue with their jewelry making.
Read the rest of this entry »

Have you seen similar silver jewelry sold at price difference of two to three times from different retailers? Have you ever wondered how retailers mark up the jewelry after they get them from the venders? Here we will show you the wholesale trading secrets of sterling silver jewelry.

Price per gram
The most important piece of information for determining the price of a piece of sterling silver jewelry is the price per gram of the silver. This is the fundamental raw material cost of a piece of sterling silver jewelry due to the fact that silver is considered a precious metal. For instance, the price for silver is $9.5 per ounce, the price per gram is determined by dividing the price per ounce by 31.5, which is 30 cents. Therefore, the cost for the raw material for a 5 gram wedding band ring is roughly $1.5. Some might wonder why people would pay $30 for a silver wedding ring when the silver only cost $1.5. The followings will explain the difference.

Labor cost
To turn raw material into finished goods, it involves a great deal of processing cost. The metal itself has to be melted, molded and cast, polished and assembled. Most of the times, silver jewelry is accented with various stones, the costs for setting the stones are also a major part of the total cost for jewelry, especially for jewelry that requires high level of craftsmanship.
Read the rest of this entry »

Are you ready for the summer yet? Is your jewelry wardrobe up to date? In order to get prepared for the summer with the right directional colors and styles, you should probably start the research right now.

Necklaces
Big and chunky beaded necklaces are still the focus of this summer. Two schools exist at the same time: organic earth tone beads and colorful and fun tone beads. Organic beads include bone and onyx necklaces. A more prevalent style is the eye-catching colored wood bead necklaces.

Rings
Parallel to the bulky necklaces, designers are fond of enormous finger rings with big faceted gemstones this summer. Bold and sparkling solitaire rings with a huge center stone set on large prongs seem to be the norm in most part of Europe this year. An extremely thick band with many small stones set on pave settings is another popular style that you might want to keep an eye on. Well, you get the idea, just be BOLD.

Earrings
As for earrings, trends are in linear or fringy styles this year. Dangle earrings with geometric designs incorporating loops and chains is the way to go. In fact, these are similar to the chandelier earrings that have been super hot for almost two years.
Read the rest of this entry »