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2007 Diary - previous year About Us - Find out more about Nancy Kamp and Jane Marie Beading - Main page and Table of Contents Books about Beads, Beading and Jewelry VeryShinyObjects.com - Watch Nancy's jewelry business grow! |
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January 3, 2008: I've been watching the Elyse Ryan program on QVC. The kits seems reasonably priced, but the components are super exspensive. This may not make sense since you don't get a lot of stuff in a kit, but the thing is, you get what you need to make a good design with no waste. That's why kits are good for beginners and those who don't trust their design sense.
January 15, 2008: JCK Online has a story about the color in the beautiful blue Hope Diamond, which says red light phosphorescence dominates. In some blue diamonds, the dominant color is blue. Blue diamonds can now be identified by their spectrum of light. This could provide a way to track the theft and recutting of historic gems.
March 5, 2008: I've been researching medical alert jewelry. The stuff is expensive and generally not that attractive. Here's what I've come up with so far: americanmedical-id.com - They offer engraved choices, but you have to pay the same price whether or not you get the bracelet or necklace with the charm. laurenshope.com - Lots of style choices, but maybe their products are too busy - people might not notice the engraving firemountain gems.com - You won't get engraving and you have to buy 200 of something to get the best price, but if you want charms, this is a place to look hahoriginals.com - Their finished jewelry is better lloking and they sell engraved charms separately. This is my site of choice.
March 8, 2008: With Jill in China, I've been dreaming about bead markets, and now I have a wealth of new ideas in Easy Birthstone Jewelry from Bead Style Books. There are 38 projects in this book and the birthstone theme, which of course you don't need to follow colorwise, gives me ideas for coordinating jewelry sets to match birth months. A nice plus is the sourcing of hard to find components. Another must have book for those of us who are thrilled by the development of metal clay and its design possiblities is Carol A. Babineau's Metal Clay Beyond the Basics. Once you get started in metal clay, it's great to have trailblazers like author Babineau to lead you to new possiblities - my favorites - centerpiece silver knots and letter stamping. In short, any day is a better day when a bead book comes in the mail, but today was outstanding.
April 18, 2008: Just got back from bead shopping in China to find not one, but two (count 'em) new bead books in the mail! Since I failed to find a bead book I wanted to buy over there in either Chinese or English, this was a wonderful surprize. Life is good. Cynthia B. Wuller's Inspired Wire is billed as a beginner book for wire wrappers, but the projects progress nicely into that intermediate stage beginners crave. The content is original and tempting. Who could ask for more?
Well, any beader could because we all want new ideas, and the BeadStyle magazine editors have given us that in Jewelry Just for You. The idea is not just to make jewelry, but to make jewelry that flatters based on face shape and neckline. We all knew about concept this going into jewelry making, but it's easy to get distracted by a new bead or technique and end up with a bunch of pretty stuff no one wants to wear. No more. And now for my China Bead Shopping Report: Unless you have a bead shop and can buy in massive quantities and go wholesale, you are not going to be thrilled by the prices you will find. I ended up buying beads only for my own use and not for resale as I had planned because the deals just weren't good enough. I bought most of my beads from three stalls in the Pearl Market in Beijing:
I do not think I made super deals, but I got beautiful beads at reasonable prices. I also got made a very bad deal there, so beware. (I did not get her card and never made it home with the small, overpriced "jade" (yeah, right) rat I purchased in a fit of insanity.) I visited the wholesale pearl floor in the pearl building on Nanjing Lu in Shanghai. This was actually my first day in China first stop in terms of bead shopping. I was initially thrown off by the small stall concept with a relatively limited choices of beads. On my second visit, I realized some stalls had more variety than I first thought, but I saw mostly pearls and pretty much the same gemstones wherever I went in China. That night, we went to a "fake market" in a metro stop where I made a few small purchases. Almost any market seems to have several bead stalls. There is also a pearl market on the third (?) floor of the pearl building in the Great Dragon Mall (don't miss for the architecture alone) that's more or less attached to Shanghai's Fu Gardens. Guidelines:
Bottom line: Bead shopping in China is not a you-get-what-you-pay-for experience. I wouldn't have missed it for the world and hope to go back, a better and wiser consumer.
April 26, 2008: As Mother's Day approaches, I've been immersed in message jewelry like our own Celebration Bracelets. There are lots of other ways to wear words or stones with meaning such as Mother's Rings. You can have things engraved, too. I'm ready to learn engraving and metal stamping and have begun name writing in wire for fun - there's no profit at my current skill level.
April 29, 2008: The Louve has just reacquired a 141 carat diamond brooch belonging to the Empress Eugénie. The museum sold the brooch and other pieces in the French crown jewels in 1887 after Eugénie's husband, Napleon III, lost his crown. The original sales price was $135,000. The latest price was over $10M.
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