Where to Buy Your Supplies for Designing Jewelry

For the last 18 years now, I have had a love for crafting, especially jewelry. I love to design jewelry, especially gold and silver wire jewelry.

When I first started designing jewelry I used pretty much nothing but glass seed beads, and a small pendent for the center of a necklace. I have always had an issue with using plastic in any of my jewelry. I will use plastic beads to make cheap necklaces for kids to buy, but as far as what I make for the big girls, it has to be glass, gem stone, gold and silver, or a variation of those. I will also use pewter on occasion as well.

When I started designing jewelry there were only a few places that had good prices to shop from, and there was no online buying yet, so I shopped through magazines, and local bead stores, as well as Michael's, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, places like that. I shopped sales, and bargains as well as yard sales too. Yard sales even now are a good place to get gold and silver pendants at a good price.

Now with the Internet, I no longer have to go store to store, I just get online, and everything I need is right there at my disposal to purchase. A few of the online shops I buy from are, Fire Mountain Gems, they have some pretty good prices on a lot of items. I buy my gold and silver wire from them, as well as my Swarvoski Crystal beads. Another place I highly recommend is Rio Grande, they too have some good prices and if you are buying in bulk, both of these sites have awesome prices.

If you would like to see some of the jewelry I've designed, you can see a few of my creations on my web site at, Carmella Mae Originals. You'll notice I do a lot of Treble Clef music notes. I love music and singing and I have always found the treble clef to be a really cool note. It is just so graceful and elegant. The photo you see here is one of my treble clefs that I made from gold wire. I created these with a wire jig and a pattern that I created in my head. Wire jigs are really awesome for doing wire wrapping. You can get a plastic jig, or a heavy duty metal, (my preference), at Fire Mountain Gems at a good price.

If you have never designed jewelry, but always wanted to, you should buy a few things and give it a try, it is a lot of fun, and once you start, you'll never want to stop!