I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah where a large percentage of people are Do It Yourself kind of folks. I am no exception. I first got interested in making jewelry back in 1989. I painted and sold wooden jewelry with my friend from high school Cindy Lunceford. The second time I got interested in making jewelry was in about 2003 when I attended a jewelry making party.
I didn’t actually learn how to complete the jewelry I made. I thought it wouldn’t be that hard to figure it out so I bought went to a craft store and bought some supplies and beads. I went home and got some pliers out and tried to make some earrings. EPIC FAIL! I felt really stupid.
I didn’t know who to ask or how to learn more about jewelry making. This all happened way before You Tube, Facebook and even before My Space. There was no Google or Wikipedia either. I was stuck.
One day I was shopping and looking at jewelry when an idea occurred to me. Maybe I could use parts of one piece of necklace and combine it with other piece of jewelry and make a kind of altered jewelry.
I bought some clearance jewelry and took it home and sure enough I could take things apart and rearrange them into something new. I was happy for a little while. I was still unable to make my own jewelry the way I wanted. Then almost magically, something happened to change all of this.
I attended Creative University, a weekend retreat, hosted by Tresa Black. One of the classes that weekend was Jewelry making. I learned the three secrets to jewelry making from Erin. I had only known one of the secrets. The other thing I learned, which is a bigger, deeper lesson is that what seems impossible is achievable with the right knowledge. Once the secrets are learned it is easy to do what seemed impossible before. Now I can tackle more complicated creations.