Friday, March 25, 2011

Jewelry Making Videos Make Learning A Breeze!

Yesterday I received a comment that brought home to me (again!) just how powerful videos are for learning how to make jewelry.

Here’s what a beginner jewelry maker said about my beginner bead jewelry making video course:

“Hi Eri, Thank you so much for the beginner course. I am a semi retired physician and since 3 of my 4 children are married, I have been trying to find courses in jewelry making in the web. I subscribe to newsletters but wasn’t able to do even 1 piece of jewelry. I felt so unartistic. Glad to know about you and jewelry making professor in Jennifer VanBenschoten newsletter and I have done a 4 leaf clover pendant with your instruction. My son said it’s fabulous. I am trying to do some more projects after I shop for more materials. I thought I can not do a piece and now I feel I can do it. You and your videos are a great help. Thanks so much.”

As I’ve said many times before, there are some people who will have no problem learning how to make jewelry by looking at patterns and books.

However, there are many people that just will not be able to learn that way. It just depends on how your brain works.

For the people who are “2 dimensional challenged” it’s great that technology has advanced to the point where we can offer recorded jewelry making classes streamed over the internet right to the desktop or laptop of the student.

It makes it possible for so many more people to get involved and learn to enjoy the wonderful craft of jewelry making.

If you are interested in giving jewelry making a try I recommend you try my 7-part video course called “Bead Jewelry Making for the Clueless Jewelry Artist WannaBe.”

The seven videos will enable you to master the basics of bead jewelry making.

Friday, March 4, 2011

Bead Kits

Bead kits are now being offered at Jewelry Making Professor.

We have always offered an All-in-one beading starter kit for beginner beaders, but we are now going to start offering beading kits for individual lessons.

I decided to do that after getting so many questions from customers about where to buy the supplies for the video lessons available on our site.

For jewelry makers who have been accumulating beads and parts for years, there’s usually enough supply laying around, but for beginner beaders it can be a real hassle to constantly head off to the bead store, or if you don’t have a bead store nearby than to surf the internet for the required beads. jewelry making

The nice thing about the kit is that it’s all done for you.

In the near future I plan to start offering kits from other bead kit makers as well, but for now I will start with Jewelry Making Professor’s own kits.

One of the uniques aspects of our kits is that the instructions that come along with the kit will not be written instructions, but an instructional video on DVD.

This will be a real nice feature for those jewelry makers that have trouble deciphering written patterns, and also if you are buying a kit to give to your favorite beading buddy, you can be sure they will be able to follow the instructions because jewelry making videos are such an effective tool for instruction.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Where To Get Jewelry Making Ideas Online

If you want to create interesting and popular pieces of jewelry, the Internet can be one of the best places to find information and inspiration. There are many different places that have ideas that you can alter and adapt in order to make them your own. Whether it is using a different color of bead or one in a different material, making small changes to the styles you see can quickly build you a jewelry wardrobe you can be proud of.
Any clear images of jewelry can be a starting place for you to look for inspiration. You should be able to find images that offer close, clear shots of the different pieces you can choose from. It is simply the individual search term that you enter which can affect what your image results will be.

Click here for more Jewelry Making Ideas

If you want more trendy pieces, consider looking at fashion magazine websites or websites that follow celebrities and models. They are often trendsetters that may have articles on the new hot color or style. They may be able to give you ideas from the basic style (whether chokers are more in style than longer necklaces, for example) to the color or materials to use. This may give you ideas that you can use to go out and create your own patterns and styles.

There are a number of blogs dedicated to jewelry making that should have clear images of pieces that you can look at. You want to make sure that the images you are looking at are clear and that you can see the detail. This is important if you are looking at a piece and trying to copy the way it is made. There are so many different details that you may want to look at from the way the wire is wrapped at the clasp to a new way of stringing beads to make a multi-strand piece.

If you love the look of a particular era or style such as Art Deco or Victorian jewelry, you want to look at websites that have images from that era. There are very particular styles that are unique to those time periods and replicating them will be much easier if you have clear images to look at. You also want to read articles which talk about the different materials that they used. For example, jet beads were commonly used in Victorian era jewelry and so using similar beads will help you achieve an authentic looking piece.

There is also a great source of images that show ethnic jewelry which may involve specific techniques and materials as well. If you look on national websites you may be able to see examples of traditional ethnic jewelry and get an idea of the materials you should be using to recreate them. Beading websites and importers of costumes and textiles may have information that you can use to make patterns from.

Knowing where to look online means that you have a constant source of inspiration when working on your pieces and this may help if you are trying to get started or even if you have been making pieces for some time.