Wholesale Jewellery Re-Creations
by Tamara Summers.
(Pink Pearls by Tamara)
Last week I was working on some re-creating. The lady that I sell wholesale to frequently gives me these projects.
A bit of background first. She also happens to be a close friend of mine. We were friends before we were business partners, and the business was born out of the relationship.
She also sells a line of wholesale Swarovski crystal jewellery from Italy, which she discovered during a family vacation there. She came back with the desire to start a business, and along with the crystal jewellery approached me about selling some of my creations.
At that point I was only doing jewellery for myself (that was two years and eight months ago), but of course was thrilled with the offer. She booked her first sale at a local university and placed a large order of crystal jewellery.
The order from Italy didn’t come in time, so she came to me and asked for everything I had. She took it all for $700.00 (not bad for a first sale, eh?), and my jewellery business was born.
That was the first opportunity for me to step in and help her, but there have been more since then. When her crystal jewellery comes apart or breaks, it’s not feasible for her to ship it back to Italy, and if it was dropped, etc. it wouldn’t be returnable anyway. So she gives it to me, to either try to fix, or if that’s not possible, to make into something else, or to use as components in my creations.
That’s what I was doing last week. She gave me about four pieces – bracelets on leather cords. The pictures show my re-creations. The first bracelet was missing the crystal stone in the centre of the “flower” (it was just a swirl originally), and the edges around where the stone had been were very rough.
I took a stone out of another part that was unusable, smoothed the whole centre area, painted the flower, added beads, and wire wrapped the leather. I loved it when I was finished, but then started to laugh – in my engrossment (is that a word?) in the design project, I had totally wired the clasp shut!
A loop hooked around the flower to close it, and I had had it closed while I was working on it. There was no way I wanted to take apart my work, so I just gently worked on the leather to stretch it as a slip on bracelet.
I have very small hands and wrists, and it was still too big for me even wired shut, so I figured it could be for someone with small wrists, or a young person. It wouldn’t work for everyone, but at least it would work for some people now, which it wouldn’t in its original state.
I knew my friend would laugh with me about the mishap, which she totally did, and absolutely loved the bracelet.
After that, I still had three pieces left to work with. I didn’t feel like I wanted to create a separate piece with each one, so I decided to see if I could combine them all into one piece. So the necklace is what I came up with.
I gathered all the usable parts, tied them together, attached them to leather cord which I roughed up a bit to match, and wired a few focal beads in.
This necklace isn’t naturally the style I would make, but I like it, am proud of it, and was happy to create something for her so she could redeem some of the money she put out. And better yet, she was so happy!
When we work this way, I don’t charge her for the time or bits of my supplies that I put in. But she transfers it to my collection then, so I get extra pieces out there. And she often just gives me things to add to my stock, so it all works out great.
Tamara Summers
Pink Pearls by Tamara
