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. 😛