The Santa Monica Gem and Jewelry Show

One of the funnest things about designing jewelry is going to Gem and Jewelry shows.  These shows are amazing!  They travel around the country with hundreds of vendors, and these vendors are selling a little bit of everything: from basic jewelry findings (posts, wires, ect.), to ready-made jewelry, to purses and scarves.   Anyone is allowed into these shows, but people with wholesale jewelry licences have access to more of the vendor’s products at wholesale prices.

My mom and I like to go to these shows at least a few times every year because we can find a very wide variety of jewelry components that we wouldn’t be able to find in our local jewelry stores.   Many of the vendors sell interesting and unique beads, charms, clasps, posts and wires, and just wandering through all of the tables is a great way to come up with new ideas for jewelry.

We bought these tree charms at a Gem and Jewelry show last year..aren't these earrings cute?

This weekend, my mom and I went to the Santa Monica Gem and Jewelry Show looking for a few specific items: earring components, sturdy clasps, and an ear shaped mannequin.  We found a lot of earring components, including several very unique charms that we are going to use to make some cute, but inexpensive, earrings.  We also found some interesting silver toggle clasps for my mom’s testimony bracelets.   While we did find a mannequin, it was a hand shaped one (for bracelets) instead of an ear shaped one (for earrings and ear cuffs).  We had a time limit, so we were only able to stay at the show for about three hours, but we were pretty satisfied with the products that we bought.

The long and short of this is that we will soon have more earrings and bracelets available online!  While we have a couple of very pretty mannequins that we have been using for our some of our earrings and necklaces, we are still searching for something to model our ear cuffs on.  The ear cuffs won’t really fit on the hard mannequin ear, and they need to be put on something a little bit more flexible.  At some point, though, we are going to find some way to photograph the ear cuffs (I might just have to model them on my own ears, lol), and then we’ll post the pictures on the website.

Talk to you guys later!

Our new obsession…shell pearls!

Diamonds may be a girl's best friend, but pearls aren't bad either. 😉

Hey everyone,

A couple of months ago, my cousin asked my mom if she would be able to design the bridesmaids’ jewelry for her wedding.  My mom told her that she would do it as a wedding gift.  When my mom asked my cousin what kind of jewelry she had in mind, my cousin said that she wanted all of the bridesmaids to wear simple pearl necklaces and pearl earrings.  While my mom thought this was a great idea, she also thought that this might be an expensive one.  A pretty strand of good quality, well matched, cultured pearls can cost hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars.  My mom was a little unsure of how she was going to come up with a half a dozen pretty, yet inexpensive, pearl necklaces for the wedding.

Then she remembered shell pearls.

Shell pearls are made from the shell of an oyster (a.k.a. “Mother of Pearl).  In case you were wondering, cultured pearls are made of the same stuff.  The difference between shell pearls and cultured pearls is that shell pearls are lab made, while cultured pearls are nature-made.  Shell pearls are becoming more and more popular, and while the price of these pearls is rising, they are still much more inexpensive than cultured pearls.

The price, however, is not the only reason pearls are growing in popularity.  Another advantage to shell pearls is that can be made to be perfectly round and uniform in size.  They also have a high luster and are very durable.  Shell pearls can withstand sweat, perfume, lotions, etc., without losing any of their luster or color.  You can wear shell pearls every day and not really have to worry about the effect that your lotion/detergent/makeup may be having on them.

My mom made the bridesmaids’ necklaces with shell pearls.  The concept was simple, and the jewelry really pretty: a single strand of pearls with a silver clasp, and drop pearl earrings.  After she finished the jewelry, she remembered why she likes shell pearls so much.  The pearls on these necklaces were pretty big, perfectly round, and had a high shine, but they only cost a fraction of the price of similar cultured pearls.  Now she has begun to make more jewelry with shell pearls (which will soon be featured on the website).  She just purchased some black shell pearls, and as someone who is very familiar with colored pearls, I still found these to be interesting.  They are the blackest pearls I have ever seen.  It’s almost like the color is truer with shell pearls than it is with cultured pearls.

My mom is making the finishing touches on these necklaces right now, so tomorrow we should have more pics up of our new shell pearl necklaces!

Finally Learned How to Add Authors to the Blog

Hey Everyone!

So, just in case you were wondering, the author of the last few posts was me (Gloria) and not my mom (Phyllis).  At first, it just said that the author of the posts was “pjjewelerydesign,” but I wanted the readers to be able to differentiate between the posts that I write and the posts that my mom writes.  I didn’t want any confusion when I write something about my mom…people might start thinking that my mom is writing about my grandmother, and that this jewelry-making team spans three generations.  Although, now that I think about it, that would be pretty cool!  We could change our name to “Two-Glorias-and-a-Phyllis Jewelry Design.”  The name doesn’t exactly roll of the tongue, but the concept is pretty cute, don’t you think?

So while the first three posts say that the author was “Phyllis,” they were actually written by me.  Hopefully, there will no longer be any confusion as to who’s writing to you guys. 😉

In other, off-topic jewelry related news, I pierced my heel yesterday.  Yeah.  I opened up my jewelery box, and a bunch of earrings fell out onto the floor.  I picked up most of them, but then I took a step forward and suddenly felt a sting in my heel.  It was a tiny little stud that I had missed, and it was all the way in my heel.   I was pretty surprised, since I’ve been barefoot running for the past few months, and the bottom of my foot is mostly callus at this point.  I couldn’t believe that a tiny little earring was actually able to break the skin.  While my little heel piercing was pretty cute (and unique), I decided to let it close up a few minutes after piercing it because I felt like it wasn’t really my style, you know?  Also, I like being able to run/walk without pain. 😛

The wire-wrapped necklace is finished!!!

The necklace I described in yesterday's post...more pictures will be available on the website soon!

After working into the wee hours of the night, my mom finished her necklace!  We’re both very excited about this one.  It reminds me of something a mermaid might wear, lol.  My mom is also finishing up another pearl wire-wrapped necklace, and she says she already has ideas for another one (which is kind of unusual, since she doesn’t do this type of jewelry all that often).

In other news, we just wanted to inform you our new promotion at pjjewelrydesign.com.  If you type in shop.pjjewelrydesign.com, and click “Register,” you can become a member of our site!  This will make it a little bit easier for us to contact you about sales and new products (we promise we won’t send you any spam).  Members will receive a 10% discount on any product on the week of their birthday, and members will also have the opportunity to purchase our new products–at a 5% discount–a full week before anyone else will!  Sign up today!

Making a Necklace…Twice?

One difficulty that my mom and I have encountered several times over while making jewelry is that sometimes, no matter how much time you spend on a project, the finished product is just not what you wanted it to be.  Those cute earrings you made?  One ends up being longer than the other.  That bracelet you’ve been slaving over for the last few days?  Turns out, the pretty crystals you added make it very uncomfortable to wear.  Sometimes, when this happens, you have no choice but to start over, and that can be very discouraging.

My mom just spent the last few days working on a beautiful wire wrap necklace.  This necklace has an alternating pattern of abalone shells that have been dipped in Swarovski crystal solution, freshwater pearls, and Swarovski crystals.   I’m telling you, this necklace is gorgeous. Wire-wrapped necklaces are some of my mom’s best sellers (the necklaces she has previously made haven’t even made it onto the website because she always has immediate offers for them), but they take a very long time to make, so she doesn’t make them all that often.

Well, this morning, my mom told me that she thinks she will have to redo the necklace.  She doesn’t think that the size of the wire-wrapped loops is uniform enough.  I also made some suggestions about increasing the length of the necklace while also reducing the size of the pendant.  This means that she is starting the necklace over.  From scratch. Ughhhh.

This comes with the jewelry making territory, though.  I have several pairs of earrings that I have to remake before I can post them onto the website.  Sometimes, I have to make about five different attempts to come up with a pair of earcuffs that actually match each other.  That being said, there is something wonderful about putting time and effort into something and coming out with an end result that is so…pretty!  That little bit of bling makes it all worth it!  🙂

Hello world!

Hello everyone!  Welcome to the PJ Jewelry Design blog!  Allow us to introduce ourselves… we are Phyllis and Gloria, a mother-and-daughter jewelry designing team.  We’ve been making jewelry for a long time as a hobby, and recently, we’ve started selling our jewelry online (pjjewelrydesign.com).  We love all things jewelry, and so we decided to start blogging about it!

In this blog, we’ll be discussing our new projects, new ideas, jewelry we’re inspired by, and a few other things that we fins interesting.  Our focus is jewelry, but nothing is off limits. 😉

Thanks for stopping by!