Sherri Haab has a new book out called Sherri Haab Jewelry Inspirations: Techniques and Designs from the Artist’s Studio and it looks to be a winner!

Sherri Haab Jewelry Inspirations: Techniques and Designs from the Artist’s Studio

This isn’t your typical “how-to” or “instruction” book for how to build certain jewelry pieces step-by-step, though it does walk you through most of what you need to do. Instead, Sherri Haab’s book tries to look at the entire process of making jewelry, from the very beginnings of inspiration right through to the finished piece of art. She has a great section in her book about how she organizes her studio, her beading and jewelry making supplies and even her inspirational ideas. For example, she keeps a large file box filled with “craft idea” clippings from various magazines and newspaper articles she’s found over the past 30 years. When she needs some inspiration she’ll sometimes go browsing through her clippings!

She also covers a lot of the basic techniques of jewelry making including a quick rundown of working with wire, resin clay, metal clay and image transfers. There are lots of photos and the writing is as clear as can be, which actually makes this a pretty good book for the beginner who is looking to make jewelry for the first time or the more advanced beader who is simply searching for better ways to do things. This is not a comprehensive book of every single jewelry making technique, but it’s not trying to be. She simply gives you a working overview of how to do certain things with jewelry in case the reader isn’t familiar with some of these techniques. A complete beginner could almost definitely pick up this book and create some pretty darn good jewelry with just a few hours of practice.

There are over 20 different jewelry projects in this book and it doesn’t stick to one specific theme or even material. Again, this isn’t a strict “how-to” book but rather a “how-I-do-it-and-you-can-too” sort of book She actually wants you to take her ideas and her techniques, mix them up, and make something new of your own! In a way this book serves as a personal tour through Sherri’s studio, her thought process when creating jewelry and her life.

For those of you unfamiliar with Sherri Haab she’s a very talented craft instructor who has written over 20 different craft and jewelry books over the years and has released her own instructional DVDs. She’s also appeared on HGTV, the DIY Network and Martha Stewart Living Radio! Oh and she blogs and cooks and has all sorts of great ideas on her website over at http://www.sherrihaab.com/. She’s written a lot of books, and Sherri Haab Jewelry Inspirations: Techniques and Designs from the Artist’s Studio is already looking to be one of her best!

My husband has been asking me to write about “steampunk” jewelry because it’s a popular style of homemade jewelry and even though it doesn’t usually involve beads, it does require a lot of different jewelry making skills and talents. Steampunk jewelry is one of the most popular types of handmade jewelry on Etsy (searching for it yields over 29,000 results) and it’s one of the few types of jewelry truly “unisex” jewelry which can almost always be worn by men and women.

Steampunk Style Jewelry: Victorian, Fantasy, and Mechanical Necklaces, Bracelets, and Earrings

Steampunk is a type of science fiction and artistic genre which mixes Victorian styles with a fantasy element of past technological history that never really existed. To get a feel for the steampunk style you might want to look at some of the more popular steampunk movies out there or even just browse through some steampunk images via Google.

Skills Needed to Make Steampunk Jewelry

If you’re going to make steampunk jewelry then you’ll want to have some basic jewelry making skills and know how to use standard jewelry making tools. You might want to pick up a simple jewelry making tool kit to get started if you don’t already have one. Here are some of the real skills you’ll want to learn or have if you really want to make some outstanding jewelry in the steampunk theme:

Traditional Beading Skills: Knowing how to work with wire, string and tie beads (or other hardware pieces) and understanding the basics of making rings, bracelets, necklaces and earrings are all useful skills to have. Being able to attach clasps and work with bindings is essential and you may need to be a little creative in exactly how you attach different materials to different connectors. Knowing how to wrap and tie things with wire couldn’t hurt. Remember that steampunk jewelry sometimes uses some pretty non-traditional pieces such as gears and watchparts, so think outside the box a little bit.

Metalsmith and Wire Skills: Most steampunk jewelry has a lot of metal elements, from used hardware to newer jewelry pieces that look as though they are old. You’ll want to be able to mesh all those recycled parts and metal tools together with something more than super glue (though I’ve seen that used!). You may want to practice soldering pieces together neatly before venturing into any complex jewelry pieces and you’ll more than likely need to learn how to safely cut and grind metal properly to avoid having any sharp edges. -metal skills (soldering, grinding, cutting)

Mechanical Skills: Here’s a skill that’s not emphasized quite so much in traditional jewelry making. You’ll want to understand how to take apart old watches, junk, gadgets and other metal things without destroying the mechanical bits inside. It helps if you have some idea of how mechanisms and gears fit together to help make your steampunk jewelry look slightly more realistic and functional. Remember: steampunk jewelry is supposed to convey technology from a past time, so it has to look as though it might do something and not just be a bunch of random metal pieces tied together.

Steampunk Jewelry Elements

When you’re making your steampunk jewelry you’ll want to probably stick with some general themes and patterns. Here are some stylistic elements to think about:

Metals Mechanical Parts and Gears: You’ll want to keep the feel of old technology in your steampunk jewelry and one of the easiest ways to do that is to incorporate old watch parts, gears and and even little pits and pieces of locks or other hardware pieces. Old luggage locks, manual typewriter parts and washers and screws can be used to build unique looking steampunk style rings and necklaces.

Brass, Copper and Silver: A lot of the steampunk jewelry I’ve seen sticks with more “industrial” type of metals which looks as though they’ve been designed for real use rather than their decorative properties. A lot of steampunk jewelry artists mix old costume jewelry metal gears and other pieces to bring in the Victorian elements to your jewelry.

Glass, Not Gems: While some steampunk jewelry will feature small gemstones, you’ll generally want to stick to glass and crystal beads and decorations to accent your metal pieces. Large shiny gems or gemstones would look out of place next to gears and springs and sprockets, but small glass or crystal beads could add some shimmer and accent a mechanical looking piece quite well.

Useful, Not Gaudy: A lot of steampunk art and jewelry takes old pieces of mechanical technology and tries to make them look like they actually do something. So while form is important, people tend to really like the steampunk rings and necklaces and even braceless that look as though they could move or operate or actually serve some sort of purpose!

Aged Well: Part of the fun of steampunk is that it’s meant to look like old jewelry from the 1800′s or early 1900′s, so it’s okay to look a bit old, used and aged. I would stay away from making your jewelry look too shiny or new and even if you put your steampunk jewelry together with new parts you might want to scuff them up, ding them or even given them a little bit of an aged finish if you can.

Leather, Ribbon and Chains: When you’re making steampunk necklaces, steampunk bracelets or even steampunk earrings you’ll want to tie things together with a material that might be appropriate for Victorian jewelry. For more feminine jewelry pieces you could use ribbon, for more masculine jewelry pieces you may want to use brown or black leather and I’ve seen different types of large link chain used for nearly everything else! Stay away from any sort of modern or synthetic material if you can and instead try to use materials from “the period” even though it’s all fantasy

Steampunk Jewelry Supplies

A few years ago you’d be hard-pressed to find any craft store or jewelry supply store selling many beads or other supplies that could be used for steampunk jewelry. Today that’s changed a lot. Many stores will now have a fairly good selection of Victorian type clasps, chains, beads, connectors and everything else under the sun that might even be marketed as “steampunk” in one form or another.

Online Jewlry Supplies Stores: If you’re using an online craft store like Artbeads.com, then you might want to search for possible new steampunk jewelry supplies by searching with words like “antique”, “victorian” or even “brass.” All of those should give you plenty of results and things which will often fit in perfectly with the look and feel of steampunk.

Flea Markets and Yard Sales: One of the best ways to give your steampunk jewelry an authentic feel is to actually use authentic jewelry and pieces from long ago. Don’t limit yourself to buying 100 year old jewelry and watches, though. Look for any sort of old metal object that is small or has small parts. Again, a lot of steampunk jewelry is made out of old springs, gears, sprockets, hooks and all sorts of other non-working “junk” that many people may be looking to sell or just throw away.

Ebay: There are lots and lots of people selling all sorts of steampunk jewelry supplies on eBay. A lot of people actually scour yard sales and flea markets just to find boxes of old mechanical supplies and broken watches which can then be sold on eBay for steampunk art projects and jewelry! The great thing about eBay is that the selection is ever-changing and varied, so you never know what you’ll find.

It’s definitely not as easy as it seems to make steampunk-themed jewelry but it is a lot of fun to try to make fantasy jewelry that actually looks as though it might have a purpose. You’ll still be making jewelry, but you’ll be making jewelry that has a few “rules” tied to it, which can really make it quite challenging and exciting to make! Good luck!

The latest buzzword in the business world is hobbypreneur which is someone who is in the process of, or has already, turned a hobby into a small business. The term really took off when there was this news story about various people who were turning their jewelry and craft making hobby into viable businesses. People who work with beads and make jewelry are natural hobbypreneurs because there is obviously only so much jewelry you can make for yourself before you start looking for ways to make your hobby pay for itself.

Starting you own home jewelry business and becoming a hobbypreneur may not be easy, but more and more people are jumping in and trying anyway. Interestingly, the market for handcrafted jewelry and the rise of the hobbypreneur are both tied to some very common social and economic trends that we’ve been seeing for a while:

Aging Population: It pains me to say this (“Oh, my aching neck and shoulders!”), but we’re all getting older! Baby Boomers are retiring and looking for ways to keep busy (like learning new craft skills) and many now have the time to find new interests. I’ve noticed that the people visiting my jewelry booth each year are more than likely people over 40. Maybe it’s just my traditional jewelry style, but I have too many teenagers looking to buy my jewelry.

Down Economy: Whenever the economy goes through a prolonged slump and jobs become scarce people do two things: they cut back on expensive luxuries and they look for ways to make more money. While gold and gemstone jewelry may be out, most people can still afford much less expensive handcrafted bead jewelry. In fact, I would argue that a recession is a great time to start a jewelry business. With a down economy you’ll also find more people jumping into jewelry making as a way to not only have jewelry for themselves, but also to raise a little extra money on the side.

New Technologies: Have you heard of this thing called the Internet? LOL! Websites like Etsy and eBay and electronic shipping carts have all made it so much easier for people to sell and buy handmade jewelry. We’re no longer limited to just buying jewelry supplies from the local craft store: instead we can jump online and shop for beads and jewelry supplies from around the world! The same technology that allows you to buy beads from another country also allows you to sell to the entire world!

Look around and you’ll find that most people who are making and selling bead jewelry probably hobbypreneurs who started out working with beads on a whim as a relaxing hobby and then quickly moved into trying to make some money from their jewelry designs. It’s fun to do something you love and get paid for it at the same time. For many of us it’s still a novel idea that our hobby of jewelry making can actually be a decent source of income if you’re willing to put in the time and energy to grow it into a small business.

I think you’ll be hearing a lot more about hobbypreneurs in the future and I think people who make their own jewelry will be right on the cutting edge. We’re smart, resourceful, good looking and not afraid to learn new things!

Now let’s just hope we can have fun and be profitable!

Update: Dionne, who wrote the excellent Bead Jewelry Profits At Last e-book took the term “hobbypreneur” one step further and call bead jewelry makers who have turned their hobby into a business “beadapreneurs”! See her comment below!

After a week of server problems, I think Bead Jewelry Blog is finally back up and functioning fairly normally. I had to move from one type of hosting to another things didn’t exactly go smoothly. I think most everything works now, though I did lose all my categories, so I’ll have to create them all over again.

I’ve added a “tag cloud” of jewelry terms to the site, but most of my posts don’t have tags, so it’s taking me a while to go back through 5 years worth of jewelry making articles! I’m also working on new categories, but that’s going to take some time as well.

Thanks for your patience!

If one of your resolutions this year is to finally start turning your jewelry making hobby into a business, then it might be a good time to take a serious look at the latest version of Bead Manager Pro! I’ve written about Bead Manager Pro before, but they just released version 4 which adds a lot of features that make it even easier to use and customize than previous versions.

Bead Manager Pro 4 is here!

I’ve written about all the features any jewelry software should include and Bead Manager Pro has all those as well as lots of “convenience” and usability upgrades that allow you to use the program to your advantage. Here are some of the more prominent improvements that will help you spend more time making jewelry and less time worrying about the inventory and financial side of your jewelry business:

• Customizable list views that allow you to add, widen and even move columns of data around.
• Duplicate parts option, which allow you to enter your inventory much more quickly.
• Quick search filtering options that allow you to efficiently look through a large inventory of beads and jewelry pieces.
• Added jewelry calculators which allow you to discover your profit and loss as well as an hourly rate calculator for more accurate pricing.

There have also been some “behind-the-scenes” database changes with the intent of making Bead Manager Pro more stable and run more efficiently. Remember, Bead Manager Pro is one of the only jewelry software programs that will run on an Apple Mac as well as a Windows PC.

What about all of us who have already bought and purchased the program in the past? We can get the new version of Bead Manager Pro for free by following a special link that should have been emailed to you. You can contact support if you have issues. The upgrade is completely free and after you install it and your current database should automatically be upgraded.

You don’t necessarily need jewelry software to run a home-based jewelry making business, but it certainly helps your business grow more quickly by giving you a tool that produces professional invoices, calculates proper pricing and helps manager your large inventory of beads and supplies in a relatively quick and easy manner that is head and shoulders above using pencil and paper!