A Great Way For Bead Jewelers to Make More Money

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Bead jewelry artists can repair jewelry for a little extra income in their business!

I haven’t been creating much jewelry lately but I’ve found myself busier than ever lately with my jewelry business. I have about four different projects that I’m working on right now, but none of them are my own creations.

Confused? I’ve started picking up some extra work repairing jewelry for some of my friends and other customers and I’m finding it to be almost as creative as making my own jewelry! I’ve repaired some jewelry in the past, but lately it seems like I’ve been doing a lot more.

It started with a friend from work who had purchased a bracelet from me a couple years ago. Her aunt passed away and my friend ended up with a box full of jewelry, but most of it was broken or in various states of disrepair. She brought in two different necklaces and asked me if I could do anything with them.

One necklace was made of some sort of green beads which might have been jade, but I’m honestly not sure. That necklace just needed a replacement clasp, so it was a pretty easy repair. I just took off the broken clasp and used a small piece of wire to attach a new one.

The second piece was more fun. My friend brought me a bag of colored wooden beads which were clearly very old. They were very large and absolutely gorgeous! The necklace used to be held together with a thin string but it had dry-rotted years ago according to my friend. We decided to skip the string and instead used Beadalon wire.

I took out my beadboard and my friend and I sat down and layed out the piece the way she remembered it being made. We made a few adjustments and found that one or two beads were actually missing so I used a wooden pendant that I had lying around work as a large center piece and we used a few small wooden seed beads at the ends to round it out and make up for the missing beads. We basically ended up recreating a piece of jewelry that was at least 50 years old and putting it back together with a few modifications of our own!

Since that time I’ve been telling people that I also do jewelry repairs and I’ve had two other people who asked for my help.

When repairing jewelry I’ve come across a couple tips that usually help me:

• Don’t be afraid to get a little creative, especially if you have to fill in missing pieces, but check with the customer first. My friend didn’t mind us modifying her aunt’s necklace, but some people aren’t so flexible.
• Matching pieces to older jewelry is pretty difficult. I almost never have any luck finding exact matches to some older jewelry pieces. You have a better chance of finding replacement pieces if you’re looking for something sort of “common” like a semi-precious stone. Even then, stone colors are sometimes hard to match.
• Do try to replace older materials with newer ones if it won’t detract from the look of the piece. String and rusty clasps may not be broken yet, but they may eventually cause more trouble in the future.
• Don’t be afraid to advertise your service and price yourself as though you’re making a new piece. I roughly charge about the same money for a repair that I normally charge for selling a medium grade necklace.

Repairing jewelry really gives me a good sense of helping people and I almost always learn a little bit about design by working with someone else’s work. I hope you have as much fun repairing bead jewelry as I do!