Taking up an old hobby: Making Jewelry

From the time I was in late elementary school until I went to college, I spent a lot of my time making jewelry. I did a lot of work with just basic beads on a string, eventually moved up to lampworking my own beads and occasionally tried my hand at metalsmithing classes. When I moved to college, that stopped--there wasn't room for most of my supplies, and besides--most places frown on you setting up a blowtorch on their premises, even for art's sake.


I've been thinking about taking up jewelry again on and off since I graduated, but never really taken a step towards it untgil last Saturday. When I was on a hunt for a present for my secret santa at work, I stumbled across the bead shop that I used to love when I was a kid, and decided to stop in with the last 5 minutes I had of shopping time.


Forety-five minutes and $25 later, I left with a bunch of beads, silver findings and a plan to make both my secret santa present and a few presents for myself. Yep. What a great, no-pressure way to get back into an old hobby--making a gift for someone that needs to be finished in less than a week, with a box of tools and supplies that I haven't even seen for 6 years.


Poor decisions.


And today (2 days before I need to have a nicely wrapped secret santa present), I finally decided to sit down and put something together. I forgot how hard it was to wrap coils and make perfect wire circles. I also forgot that I only used to buy terrible quality wire, sticky clasps and funny-looking chains. My earrings, luckily for me, were simple enough to turn out beautifully:



Her present....well, we'll just leave that for your imagination and make an emergency trip to the craft store tomorrow. And just in case, I'll make sure to look up how late the liquor store is open!