Hi everyone. Welcome to my letter J post in the #AtoZChallenge. Today, I want to share about one of my crafty hobbies once again, because I thought it’d be an interesting distraction from the more philosophical musings. Besides, I just didn’t have another topic for this letter, ha.
I made my first pieces of jewelry back in the psych hospital in like 2014 or 2015. Back then, I bought quite expensive beads, such as gemstone beads, even though I could only make basic necklaces and bracelets. That is, I did make one necklace with three different wires, but I needed a lot of help with it.
Then, after a while, I stopped making jewelry, because I just needed too much help with it and couldn’t really produce the quality I liked. I restarted about a year ago. This time, the first beads I bought, were simple acrylic beads that weren’t too expensive or precious. I did try to go for shapes I liked, such as butterflies. I also at one point bought a collection of 90 silver-colored, plastic charms for €5,95.
For my birthday last year, I got a surprise package of jewelry-making supplies from a store local to my parents. In this package were a lot of glass beads, which I loved. Thus came back my love of creating glass and actual metal jewelry.
Because most of my glass beads are irregularly shaped, I at first struggled to get each side of the necklace, with the charm or pendant in the middle, equally long. To solve this, I got myself a beading board to be able to count out the length of each side of the necklace. My best glass beaded necklace is one I created about two months ago using this board as a guide.
I also like to make my own beads and jewelry out of polymer clay. I created one pair of earrings back in the early days of my polymer clay journey, but glued the earring posts to the polymer clay using generic jewelry glue. Now some people do use E6000, but even that’s generally recommended against for polymer clay. The best way to attach polymer clay earrings to their posts is to cover the posts in an additional layer of polymer clay. If you want or need to use glue anyway, choose a brand of superglue gel, such as Gorilla or Loctite. I had my staff glue the below brooch to its pin using Gorilla superglue.
A Multitude of Musings 
The golden necklace on the board looks very similar to an antique necklace I have of my mother’s ♥️
Sent from my iPhone
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Oh, that’s so interesting, thanks for sharing.
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It’s a beautiful brooch. Making things is so satisfying.
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I agree creating things is definitely satisfying. I’m glad you like my brooch too.
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It’s very pretty
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I love hand made jewellery. The beads u shared here r bful
Dropping by from a to z http://afshan-shaik.blogspot.com/
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Thank you. I’m glad you like these.
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We really enjoy seeing the things that you make!
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Thanks! I’m glad you like it.
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While I do a lot of crafts, jewelry making has never been one of my things. I do use beads as decorations on my mini-albums sometimes. I like the colors in the first one.
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Decorating your mini albums with beads sounds so interesting. Thank you for sharing. I’m glad you like the colors of my first necklace. Honestly, I can’t remember what colors I used in that one.
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Beautiful 😍
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Thanks so much! 🙂
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I have supplies, and my daughter and I were going to do more of it, but… I never was any good at finishing it off, the clasp part and getting it knotted right.
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I can relate to that. In fact, I got help with finishing the pieces with a clasp or knot. It is good to know that someone else struggles with this too. Makes me feel less alone.
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Astrid, I think your so creative! I have never tried beading, other than making one or two bracelets, but they were simple ones. X
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What type of bracelets do you make then? I only make simple bracelets now too.
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I make them with beads sometimes, but sometimes it’s just with string like heavy string. I can’t think of the name of it but there is a name to it.
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Oh okay. I can’t make bracelets with string at all. I mean if you mean like knotting the string.
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