Beads and Wires

How and where do you keep your handmade jewelry? In a jewelry box? A fabric pouch? Or just simply have them wrapped up with a piece of paper torn out from old magazine? Haha!

While I haven’t created a big collection of handmade bracelets and earrings, I do find it a problem to keep even less than a dozen of handmade jewelry projects. So I’ve gotten myself some cheap jewelry pouches from Jaya Jusco to keep my handmade bracelets.

I’m still trying to figure out the best way to store earrings so that the earring hooks won’t get bent, or become tarnished over time due to exposure to the air. For the time being, my handmade earrings items are all sitting in a small plastic container cushioned with tissue papers. (What a way to keep things! Haha!)

As for my recently completed earrings projects, I will first hang them on this handbag miniature jewelry hanger from Lovely Lace…

A lovely and elegant handbag, isn’t it?

From London, of course! Here they are… Not really a great variation and quantity I have here (because they are expensive!), but enough to make several bead jewelry projects if combined with what I already have.

Label of Bead Shop from one of the packaging

Swarovski crystal faceted cubes in Jet AB (AB = Aurora Borealis, a rainbow effect created by applying the finish to hot glass.

Frosted bugles with rainbow finish - not sure if these can considered as matte beads, which are usually frosted to give them a non-shiny appearance

Frosted rocailles with rainbow finish

Polymer beads (insects, turtle and fish - cute!), enameled metal beads (starfish), and filigree butterfly metal beads

Mixed glass beads that comes in various shapes

Lined seed beads (i.e. beads that are usually transparent or translucent and have a metallic or opaque coating on the hole)

Looks like I need to update my inventory!

Although more complicated than the first earring project, I only have to learn two skills in this project - cutting excess length off of the headpins and eye pins, and making a loop after a pearl or crystal is threaded into the pin.

Bought this earring DIY kit from 1 Utama. Everything needed is in the pack.

It comes with a picture of how the end product should look like. The only instruction it has is on making the loop. As for the rests - the order in which the metal beads and pearls and crystals are put in, when to use headpin or T pin - I had to figure it out myself. It’s good practice though because jewelry making involves designing, estimating the materials you need, and planning the steps of your project ahead before you put your hands onto it.

So this is how my second pair of earrings look like.

I don’t know where to hang the earrings except on my laptop (with a dusty monitor), hehe. An easy project like this hasn’t given me enough practice in making loops. I need to do more to perfect the loop.

To know what headpins and eye pins are, and how to make a loop, visit how-to-make-beaded-jewelry.com. It’s a very useful site that carries almost all the basic information you need to learn about beaded jewelry.