From Concept to Completion: Making Jewellery

Ever wondered how jewellery designers come up with their ideas? What design factors are taken into account (and what commercial limitations there are in place)? Here I aim to give you an idea of my concept-to-product process. A sunny afternoon in late July is not really the setting one might expect a winter jewellery collection to be conceptualised in but that’s exactly what I was doing this summer. July is the perfect time for me. Summer is slow on the jewellery components and beads side and I like to stocktake over the summer to ensure everything is ready for the September rush on jewellery making customers. So I close my online shops in late July, take everything I want to use to make jewellery and then frantically make as much as possible for a month before stocktaking and re-opening my shops in September. This lets me get a wide range of items designed and made before my manic sales of the final four months of the year start. I was sitting outside one very clear morning in July and the clouds were like little fragmented puffs of ice. My ‘Winter Fantasy’ collection is based around those beautifully crisp, clear mornings in winter where the dawn lights up the entire sky in barely-there shades of pink, blue, lilac and lemon with dotted white clouds. Think the morning after snowfall when the sun is glinting off bright white snow and frozen icicles. The ‘Fantasy’ part comes from my love of the magical and whimsical. About half of my collection features unicorns, pegusi, fairies, stars, moons and the like. Moving from the concept to actual jewellery is a careful process. First I look at the colours and pick out appropriate shades in Swarovski crystal and occasionally, glass beads. I’ve used a lot of crystal AB, light sapphire, aquamarine, light rose, rosewater opal and violet opal among others. Then I look at my Sterling silver components. I sell components in various finishes of silver from very dark antiqued to the bright, almost white silver of very highly polished findings. It was the latter which were incorporated into this range. Next is design and make. It’s important to get a balance between artistry and retail savviness if you’re depending on sales for a living. I do make art pieces which take many, many hours, but when designing a retail collection there has to be a trade-off between time spent and rewards available (i.e. how much I can sell them for). So a lot of my retail collection are both beautifully simple and relatively quick to make which in turn allows me to keep prices at an affordable level. I tend to design 2 or three pieces, sort out the quantities I will need to make duplicates and then make up multiples of them. Again, this is a simple matter of economic sense, particularly as all my jewellery is sold through my eBay store. eBay implemented changes for business sellers earlier this year which make selling multiple quantities of the same item far more cost effective and likely to succeed than selling individual items. So most items are made with between 3 and 10 pieces of the same item. My jewellery ranges tend to centre around necklaces, bracelets and earrings and often I’ll make up matching ranges of necklace, bracelet and earring so a customer can buy a whole set if they wish. I make an average of 20 pieces a day for around 4 weeks. That’s over 500 pieces, all carefully hand crafted in my studio in South Gloucestershire, England. My jewellery is available online exclusively through my ebay store at www.stores.ebay.co.uk/princess-jewellery. I also sell a large range of beads and findings, many of which went into my current collection, both through my ebay store and through my website at www.princess-jewellery.net. Gallery Sterling silver necklace with Swarovski Crystal in shades of blue, green and teal. Sterling silver earrings with fairy drops and Swarovski crystal hanging from delicate rose-shaped post earrings. 9 Carat yellow gold earrings with 9ct glitter beads and aquamarine Swarovski crystal. Sterling silver charm bracelet with Swarovski Crystal beads, glass lampwork beads and a beautiful fairy charm.

Something is missing....?

I have a vague feeling that I've missed something I've finished recently when doing these photos. I KNOW I forgot to photo my Vintage Lace (or possibly Rhapsody in Lace) necklace - the cake part of my Coffee & Cake sets but I'm sure there's something else missing. No clue what though.

Either way. I don't usually make earrings as anything but an afterthought - I'll make them up to go with a necklace or bracelet, but this week I felt like making some relatively quick projects and opted for earrings in 9k gold (partially because I needed to make up the numbers for hallmarking - I only had a couple of pieces in gold and given that I have to pay for a minimum of 10 IIRC, I may as well send that many in for hallmarking)

Today however I have earrings to show you. And the Coffee part of my Coffee & Cake necklaces

Hoop earrings made with 9k gold wire, Swarovski bicones in Capri Blue and Swarovski crystal pearls in Gold Pearl.

More hoop earrings in 9k gold wire with assorted colour Swarovski bicones. Kind of dreamcatchery. Wish I had some little gold feathers to hang off the bottom.

Emeralds and golden shadow Swarovski crystal cluster earrings with 9k gold wire. The spirals at the bottom are a direct result of my being unable to get hold of headpins at a remotely sensible price in 9k. Mainly I just wanted to play with green and gold. I like the colour combination.

Long chain drop earrings in fire colour crystals and 9k gold. I adore these (and am halfway through making a matching bracelet - unfortunately I forgot that I'd sent the relevant 8mm Swarovski round faceted fire opal beads to my mums for counting).

Cute butterfly earrings. I wanted to see if I could do exact replicas/matches in bent wire so I did the wing shapes on these and added rose and 9k stardust beads and light rose Swarovski butterflies.

And the coffee part of my coffee and cake necklace and is called Autumn Cascade. This is - as my pal Andy would put it - an blatant exercise in fanwank. Not that I'd use such a crude term, but it WAS inspired by a very beautiful character for which the costume dept managed a perfect and meticulous detail to her jewellery at all times. Prize if you can guess the character :p. Hint - TV.

I have - finally - finished the cake section which is probably called Vintage Lace but potentially Rhapsody in Lace. Feel free to vote :p You can also vote for 'naming your jewellery is the most stupidly pretentious thing I've heard in a long time' if you must. Be nice about it though, I appear to be somewhat oversensitive at the moment.