The Little Passions of an Artisanal Jeweler

A friend of mine suggested the other day, that I should try and make a living our to making jewelry. The idea - truth to be told - seems somewhat farfetched for me. Me? An artisanal jeweler? Not that I look down at such a beautiful job, but more like I'm not sure about my skills at jewelry making, nor would I know how to start such an enterprise. Could I even start selling them? And if I do, could I keep up the pace with the making of the jewelry? Could my creativity run far enough to make enough exciting necklaces, bracelets and earrings? My handwork - crude as it is still, goes mostly to please my friends, making them humble sets for birthdays, Christmas or some particular occasion, and even so, to make a set for a friend I often spend months and months trying to come up with a good idea, with something inspiring, trying to get a concept of what that person makes me feel, what I think of them, beaded up and strung up. Then there's a hunt for the beads and parts I need - which never, EVER, goes as easy as I'd like it to go.

This was my jewelry making box back in Costa Rica.

Even this contained only a small part of my supplies.

Most of the time my problem is that I can't find the pieces I want, or that I would like a particular piece, a particular design, and all that ends with me thinking that I should take a course of goldsmith and silversmith, and other similar crafts that would allow me to not only string or wire up beads and other elements into handmade jewelry, but also be able to make the pieces - beads, medalions and such - to make even more personalized and organic pieces. Then, however stupid it might sound, I tend to think of the jewelry I make, as a form of magic. In a piece I craft - even if it's composed of synthetic pieces - there are thoughts about the person I'm making it for, and good wishes. Wishes of happiness, of peace, of health, of success, of love, joy and such. It's not like they are magic charms that would bring upon them love or money or any of those things, but they carry my energy and my love and good wishes. Though I could imagine making them simply hoping that the person who wears them will have happiness in their lives - while wearing or not the piece, that shouldn't matter - could I keep it up if I'm doing it for a business?

My jewelry supplies now.

This is all.

I particularly like the porcelain beads.

I've bought a cardboard box and a pair of pliers perhaps some two months ago or more. They stayed on a shelve for a while. I wasn't feeling like making jewelry, though I love making it. I dreamed of making lovely, chunky ethnic-like pieces - much like those Dr. Bones uses in the series - but never got around to make them. After over three months, I know only one beadshop... and that's more than the number of yoga centers or scrapbook stores I know. That one beadshop - though magical - is so tiny they don't really cater for extravagant pieces to string up ethnic pieces.

The beadshop was full, however, of beads and supplies I have never seen before. Wires of different thickness - and I mean, different sizes measured by a tenth of milimeter difference! Then beads beautifully displayed in tiny test tubes and little glasses. I found tubes of purple beads, which I haven't been able to find nowhere else, and all sorts of glass medalions and such. Then, the other day - right after yet another disaster experience - I decided to go soothe my soul at the beadshop. I remember a remark my friend Patricia added to one of my posts about a necklace (a "Mother Earth" necklace, actually, which I included because the design was so beautiful, organic and nearly primitively religious, I felt it related well to the topic) and though about trying to use it as inspiration to string up my own Mother Nature necklace. Well, there were not enough supplies there for that necklace, and some of the wood beads that would have worked where outrageously expensive, so I simply went around the tiny place carefully looking at the supplies. Then, before I new it, I was packing up a small wood plate with metal compliments, a couple more of pliers, some wire, a 7 compartment case, earring hooks and an assortment of glass and porcelain beads. The pieces by themselves didn't speak to me about no piece to be made, I just bought them because they were pretty, and I have never seen anything like them in Costa Rica.

I'd like to start making some jewelry again, as not only I love new jewels, but I enjoy making them very much. However, there are still many supplies to be gathered for that, and many experiences to be collected to fuse into my next pieces. Handfuls of my handmade jewelry stayed back in Costa Rica, and only some pieces made it here (particularly my black creations, as I need all my June Jewelry with me, for they are otherwise hard to find), but a new place and new experiences need new pieces. Who knows? Maybe in my next piece I'll find the commercial inner jeweler in me, but until then, my handmade spells remind free of charge and gifts of the heart.