How it got started
Nearly 20 years ago, my wife wanted to learn about stringing beads. She enrolled in a local community college beading and stringing class. It made sense for her to understand and learn how simple fashion jewelry is made. I mean women love all kinds of jewelry and some men do too, so it is natural to take the next step. One thing led to another and she signed up for the GIA Pearls Stringing courses and completed with distinction. Armed with the newly minted skills, she turned her attention to turning this into a business. As with most of her projects, yours truly is tasked with the execution phases. Just like her putting a dot on the paper and I have to draw a circle around it. That means coming up to speed with all the that are required for successful implementation.
My wife is blessed with good taste and an eye for quality. She can walk into any store and pick the most expensive item without looking at the price. She may not even be familiar with that product. There is a fish story about this that I will leave for another article. So like any lady, she took it upon herself to “source” (aka shopping) for the raw material. She would attend all gem and jewelry trade shows and come home with bags of gemstones and pearls. They came in strands, so she had bags containing strands of these pearls and gemstones. The problem was she bought what she liked personally and not because she thought it would fit her designs. She is the get it first and worry about how to make it fit
It was an eye-opening experience for both of us. I knew nothing about gemstones or pearls, while she is familiar with the expensive gemstones every woman dreams of having. Beyond these, we were clueless, but that did not stop her from pursuing this hobby. In my case, I had to learn web design, photography, photo editing, understanding e-commerce, and spotting scammers. I am a hands-on type of guy, I like to roll up my sleeves and dive right into it and learn as I go. I just do not have the patience to read through a how-to book. I signed up for a photography class at a local community college.
Jewelry photography is a different animal than those lessons taught in the photography class. I learned a lot about the term “White Balance”, yet I was at a loss trying to put it into practice. I had only a small camera to work with, the kind you take on a trip where you set it to auto. I did not want to invest in a better camera as my skill and knowledge were not at a level where a better camera would make a difference. It was all trial and error and a lot of googling.
I have always wanted to get into Web design back then. Again, I have never done it before and have a general idea of what is required. It was learned as I went. My software development background did help me overcome some terminologies and concepts and cut down on the learning curve. Twenty years ago, WordPress was still in its infancy and wasn’t too user-friendly. I decided to just use HTML scripts for my website as it was easier to manage. The website was by no means fancy, just plain and simple, but it did what it was needed for.
There were growing pains along the way for me, but having a reason to purchase accessories and software made it worthwhile. It was news to my ear when my wife told me to take a metalsmithing class because she needed me to help with incorporating silver and gold into her design. I have seen jewelers at work before and was fascinated by the tools and equipment used. I was intrigued by the torch. The metalsmithing class I took at the community college gave me the confidence and knowledge to
