Let's make some ghungroo danglers.

Making Ghungroos!

There is something I find very therapeutic about making and attaching ghungroos to a piece of jewellery. It is a very time consuming task, but it looks just oh-so-pretty once they all bunch together very nicely.You can give off a wave of satisfaction when everything is nice and ready. Personally I have sat and made about 500 ghunroos in one sitting.... for an earring, and by the end my fingers were sore but the earring glowed! Literally!

Material:

1. Ghungroo wire
2. 3mm beads
3. Round nosed pliers

Beads:
You will need some small sized beads, I recommend upto 4mm size only. Anything larger and they start making the entire piece of jewellery heavy and bulky. You can get away with it, if its a neck piece but in earrings its a make or break factor is usually weight.

Ghungroo wire:
This is small ball ended thin wire, usually made from a flexible metal like say copper.

Round Nosed Pliers:
We use this to make the loops of the finished piece even and rounded not to mention is gives a good grips when you have to make the loops.


Making Ghungroos

Take a ghungroo wire from the bunch, it has a ball end at both the ends so we need to cut it into half first and then use it as a ghungroo wire. Slide the bead into the wire so that it rests against the ball end of the wire.
Tug the open end of the wire to make sure that the ball end of the wire does not slip out of the bead. If for any reason the ball end slips out of the bead either take another bead with a smaller hole in it or add a seed bead at the ball end before you slide the actual bead in so that it acts at the end of the wire. Usually this method is used for bigger sized beads since their holes are correspondingly bigger. But remember if you use seed beads then use them in all so as to keep them looking the same, irrespective of the other bead holes.








Once the bead is in the wire use your round nosed pliers and place the ghungroos wire between the two prongs of the pliers. Press the pliers together so that the wire is caught in between and does not move. While it should essentially not move, do not put too much pressure on the wire because it might cause damage and eventually become weak and break. The wire should be placed in between the pliers closer to the bead ( as shown in the below picture), leaving a gap of 1-2mm between the pliers and the bead to allow for the first perpendicular loop to be placed.

Make a loop with the wire around ONE prong of the round nosed pliers. I use the forefinger of my left hand to hold the wire in place after this loop so that the wire does not budge and I can adjust the pressure of my hand simultaneously. I hold the pliers in my left hand and use my right to make the loops since I am right handed. It is most comfortable for me, please take your time to find what works for you.  

Once you have looped the wire around the pliers, now change direction and start moving the wire on top of the bead around the wire ( perpendicular to the loop around the pliers). So start making loops from the wire at the top of the bead , moving downwards onto the bead. Once you wrap the wire around the bead tuck the last bit of wire inwards with the back of your nail so that it does not stick out. Doing this not only gives a finished look, it also protects the wire from snagging in hair or clothes or poking into skin.

 I hope this makes your design a little more festive as I did mine!

~Sore hands
Richa

  

Making Jewellery is easy, but being a entrepreneur is not!!!!

While making jewellery itself is quite simple, one always needs to make an informed choice about it. Jewellery making stands on a three legged milk stool. I believe, and this is just my opinion , that most handmade jewellery fares low to high range based on these three main factors.

1. Innovation & Skill
2. Raw Material
3. Budget

INNOVATION

My reason for putting innovation on the top is, that creativity, artistic freedom everything stems from this one main point. If you want to try something new, you have to give it the extra push irrespective of money. One never escapes learning and what better way to understand your work than trials. You will need to be extra critical of your work, there is no two ways about that. If you want to learn and grow in designing handmade articles you must realise your own shortcomings and try to fix them. My shortfall is symmetry, how much ever I try, what people thinks look good, looks asymmetric to me and that's what I work on the most.

Important Note:
In the world of creativity, the term "inspiration" has been twisted into suiting people's needs. Ethics is too plays an important part of innovation. But if one must recreate, take the needed permissions and give credit to the original artist. Someday you might be someone's "inspiration" and get due credit as well. Do onto others what you would want done onto you. An idea is worth a lot more than it looks. I have faced ire at supposedly having "copied" someone's work (where in the idea was my own from almost a year ago which I revisited in a slightly different way). My page and I both suffered, its horrible because a public spat not only damages your image but definitely loses you clients. People take sides and it creates fodder for some others to reign on.

RAW MATERIALS

Since this forms the biggest part of your expenditure and savings, take utmost care while buying. There is nothing like buying from the source. Find a market nearest to you and buy material with money set aside from previous sales. It's an important reinvestment. Start with what you think is different , fits your budget and you can buy repeatedly if need be. Once you and your customers are comfortable with your material, start to upgrade to better material. for eg: start with buying acrylic beads  but aim to moving into glass beads and eventually semiprecious stones. The transition may be long or short, judge your own skills and customer demands and only then make a change to better material. But once at better material DONOT turn back. You can afford to keep a range from cheap to expensive only if you are a shop that caters to a variety of consumers, a handmade jewellery artist does not necessarily have that advantage.
I personally go to Mumbai, once a year and walk around the market scourging for new things and yes good quality things too. I need to start saving and putting aside money during the year to make this trip. It helps as well to meet the sellers, this helps build a rapport with them. If they know you, they are more willing to cater to your needs whenever you need help. They may even go out of their way to supply material to you.

Online sources are good for convenience ,but the draw back is that you cannot do a quality check from photos and sometimes is a risk, which you need to be ready for.
I once bought Rs 2000/- worth polymer clay online and it turned out to be bad and dry lot, since this was my very first investment it hurt a lot. I was a beginner and could not afford to have "bad" material to waste money on. I blacklisted that seller and had to buck up, refuse orders and lose money, both incoming and outgoing. Even today if my bill is over Rs1000/- from an online buyer, my heart starts pounding and reminding me of my bad experience. Now I only buy from reputed sellers even if they are a tad more expensive.

BUDGET

Once you are running a business (so to speak) money is an integral part of it. You have to assign budget for material, your time and designs and overheads like couriers or delivery, packaging, giftwrap, marketing, online selling cut, card payments or paypal commission,tools, stationary, exhibitions and sales etc. Everything today costs money, and it would do well to charge for your time accordingly as well. When you are designing for someone, it is the best practice to ask you client for their budget. It sounds rude, but you can only bear so many losses in trials. You can always go an extra little step to go beyond the expectations of your clients, and in turn gain their trust. You never know, you might end up as friends later! A new business needs time to set up, so expect slow sales in the beginning but start socialising for your business. It's marketing at grassroot level- word of mouth and needs less to no money. Once you have a footing in the market, invest in marketing , do exhibitions / pop up stalls/ promotional events.

Making some art
~Richa

P.S
I have an upcoming Jewellery making workshop in Pune, India
follow the event link below for info.

https://www.facebook.com/events/527651930754926

Simplyfying the findings- Earrings!

We have loads to do, so pull back your sleeves and let's dive into more Jewellery making theory- earrings!

Findings are basically all the little bits and bobs you need to make beads or collection of beads into Jewellery.  They can really be itty bitty to really humongous things.Findings help not only to create a piece, but at most times is essential to the over all look of the jewellery. So excluding beads you will see a lot of information, and for ease of understanding I have split them into parts, starting with earrings.

knotted headpin
Image source : google

PINS/ WIRE

Pins form the spine to any design, so it can be bent-straight, long-short.
The Pins can be thick, thin depending on the gauge (scale of measurement) of the wire used. The gauge number decreases as the thickness of the wire increases. It can be expensive or cheap, again depending on the metal used. The colour of the finish also changes according to the metal, For example: silver finish pins need not necessarily be made from silver metal, it is a silver coloured metal or are sprayed with a silver metallic finish. Usually we coordinate the colour/ finish with the rest of the design.

l-r : Eye pins, Headpins
Image source : google

1. Heads Pins: They are like the name says, they have a head at one end just like a nail, and the other end is open. The most easy to find and widely used are flat heads.However, to kick things up a notch designers also use ball shaped and or decorative heads, you can even bend wire into knots and make it into a head pin. This is one of the basic elements that one would require to invest in. They are largely used in earrings or closed end danglers. The usage may dictate what kind of Head pins you buy.

2. Eye Pins: Again as the name suggests, it has a eye like loop at one end and open at the other to help you slide beads into place. This is usually used in making links. So an Eye pin can be used to make a really long dangler earring or a necklace which is linked together!


EARRING HOOKS

While its easy enough to make the earring the simplest earring hook found is the fish hook. It can be made with winding wire adding a few beads to even customise it according to colour of the rest of the earring. It is simple question mark shaped hook. We also find other earring hooks lever back ( closed earring hook ), studs (with or without dangling components ), hoops, kidney hoops, clip-on and lastly handmade/ decorative hooks.

types of earring hooks
Image source : google/ self

EARRING NUTS/ BACKING
Studs and Open ended earring hooks are prone to falling out of the ear if not secured properly, earring nuts are used to keep them in place from behind the ear. Sometimes Earring nuts can be part of the design of the earring to make it look long with added support to the links so that it is not heavy for the ear.

Sometimes we can use some findings like Wire/ Pins in earring as well as necklaces. The world is your oyster , be creative about your findings to create new and unique things!!!

~ Learning to teach/ preach/ train
Richa

Health and Salads, learning to cook, I am!

Google is such a good source of information these days. It lets you find in an instant anything, be it how to do a certain thing or what are the contents of a certain other thing. Similarly I have found it

rewarding sometimes to search for recipes and then tweak it to make my taste buds happy. There was a time when I was hooked on to Jamie Oliver’s cooing style. I found it very raw and natural, it felt like he always went with the flow and the tastes just mingled with each other. At other times there was Nigella Lawson who was the focus of my attention especially when it came to desserts, she seemed real. Today I have been hounding Cupcake Jemma, she is spirited and has such fancy tools which I can drool over and ofcourse, my new found love for baking!  

There was a time when I had restricted my diet to only eating Salads, It was as month of pure hell for me! I had promised my father to stick to vegetarian food along with him since he had recently been detected with Diabetes, and he was asked to control his diet. My mom at the time was based out of Mumbai and I had just returned from the UK. My dad has just retired and had accompanied me back to Pune (I fear it was to not to let his young unmarried daughter to live alone! J ) In the beginning me and my dad would cook together, but I am a clumsy chef when I have to share the space with someone else, I like the kitchen all to myself. I am not below accepting help when it comes to vegetable cutting, so that became my father’s job. I was unemployed for the first few months, but when I secured employment my schedule was very tight. I had to cook before 8 am for both times of the day, as I returned home only around 8 after battling traffic and almost no energy . I found it very challenging I had never balanced a “homelife” ahead of work before, but with my Father’s diabetes, food was an important part of his schedule.

At this point Junk food was not an option, and for me there was also a sudden change from Tesco in the UK to Local “Kirana” (grocery store) and vegetable markets. Luckily my father took over those things for me, and I never had to worry except to give him a list of things we need, or to name a few vegetables. I am so lucky in the sense that my mother was a no nonsense woman in my childhood and that my grandmom was a mega awesome cook. My mother trained me to eat whatever was put on my plate (that is not to say that I did not have likes and dislikes) and it always pleasured my taste buds to no end! That has my grand mom’s cooking skills written all over it. If you ask any of my aunts, cousins on my dad’s side, everyone will agree that cooking comes to them naturally from my grandmom and her side of the family. So I proved to be her grand-daughter too. I love food, and I would like to say that I am sensitive to tastes as well. Since my stint in the UK, I pretty much eat anything happily, as long as it tastes good. On a trip to Spain, I had actually closed my eyes, run my fingers up and down the menu card and yelled stop at a point and chose my food randomly. It ended up being an octopus, extremely bland and cold. I managed to eat at-least 3/4^th of it before I exchanged it with my friend. In France we even had a thinly sliced beef with olive oil, salt and capers for garnish and it was heavenly (it was such a thin slice, not even close enough for a meal). Once for a conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, I ended up trying out local cuisine in the shape of crocodile meat, deer meat and rabbit meat! So you see, I have had my fair share of eating trials.

Chicken Pasta- Marinated the chicken
 overnight in my Lime honey dressing! 

Coming back to salads, it was little tough for me in the beginning.  I would say my sojourn with salads began in the UK itself. I love pork (bacon) and I would make crispy bacon and then pour the leftover oils on the pan into my salads and oh I was left licking my fingers by the end.  When I started work (in India), my schedule was hectic and to save on time I started to make only salads. The first few days I stuck to cucumbers and tomatoes, but they get boring really fast. After less than a week I was craving normal food again. The biggest drawback of not being in the UK was lettuce. I used to chomp on it like a cow!  Here lettuce was rare and the one we found was a little bitter too. God, how I missed being in the UK then. It wasn’t just the lettuce; there was olive oil, fresh herbs, exotic fruits that I missed! That’s when I decided to try and work out a new salad dressing palate for myself! I am firm believer of lemons in food. So I started making dressings with a lemon base. Then slowly I convinced my family that, although Olive oil was expensive it was a good addition in salads. I pretty much started experimenting with different tastes that I felt could go together. I had by this time tried lemon + garlic combination with a hint of cardamom, Lemon +rock salt +sugar (at times I replaced the sugar with honey, maple syrup or cane sugar), Lemon +pepper + ginger, honey+ mayo, lemon+ honey+ basil ( this was one of the fresh herbs very readily available in my house). Someone once said to me, while changing a recipe only change one component at a time and believe me this advice has helped me time and again. Once my dressings were chosen, I started adding dry fruits like walnuts, Pistachios, soaked almonds, raisins (which at some point I also substituted for fresh grapes cut into halves). Sometimes, when the fancy took me I added ground nuts as well. I even made salads from apples, pears and guavas. Oranges were squeezed once in a while to replace lemon juice. By now I have experimented with Pastas, Cinnamon, dried Cilantro, fresh Coriander, Parmesan cheese, Feta Cheese, sautéed Fenugreek, blanched French beans, various sprouts, Pomegranates, Chicken sausages ( for me and my dad), boiled egg in salads.       

As I am writing this, I realise there are so many more flavours still waiting to be tried! And someone said salads were boring. There is so much more it than meets the eye or reaches the taste buds.

 Foodie at heart

~Richa

The End of a year... 2015- Overview of Jewelry tools.

I started into the jewelry making purely from very exploratory view. I had no inkling that it would one day come to be my crutch. Things were not easy and each lesson at the beginning seemed to teach me to be more cautious. It wouldn't be wrong to say that it now becomes 'a time when I knew nothing phase'. When I made up my mind to be serious about it, I had to learn the basics, a lot at the beginning through google and soon through experience as well. As this year ends and I see myself moving in a new direction (from a jewellery making perspective and otherwise) I am hoping to unburden some of my knowledge onto you unsuspecting folks.

Basic Jewellery Tools Part 1- Pliers

You will need the bare basics, which are available in your local tool store.
 Generally you do not use more than 3 basic pliers, unless you are using it for wire bending jewelry. So make sure you know the usage of the pliers you are buying before making the final purchase. Listed below are the most commonly used pliers in Jewelry. Most of the time they have a specific use, the first three are the most essential to possess.

clockwise from Yellow- round nosed pliers, straight cutter, diagonal cutters, Crimping pliers, Needle nosed plier ( smaller and finer tip size) , Needle nosed pliers bigger size. 

1.  Needle nosed Pliers ( Sometimes we refer to them as flat nosed pliers as well, but know that there is also a different Flat nosed pliers in the market)
This is the most essential of tools, it is but our hand in this profession. I would recommend investing in a good, strong one.

2. Round nosed pliers
Used to make perfect round shaped bends in the wires used for binding jewelry together. The size of the loop depends upon where the wire is placed. The tip has the tiniest circumference and as you go alone the nose the circumference increases..

3.Diagonal Cutter/ flush cutters
Its used to cut wires. The cut is diagonal to aid cutting the wires even in small crevices. I personally use a Nail cutter for most things, except where the metal is harder to cut. It's inexpensive, so I don't mind replacing it when it goes blunt ( which it will quicker than a cutter).

4.Chain-nosed Pliers

long nosed pliers- image source google

It has slightly serrated edges and a lot of times also includes a cutter notch at the end of the pliers. It is used to hold wires, such that they do not move. Drawback is sometimes the wires get damaged or scratched because of its edges.
 
5. Long nosed pliers: It is a variation of the needle nosed pliers, with a longer nose to reach difficult to reach places and a slimmer tip. What I noticed however is, because of the long nose, I find it difficult to use , unless specifically needed.

Bent nosed pliers, image source google

6. Bent nosed pliers: As the name suggests the pliers have a bent tip to enable the plier to reach at a particular angle.

7. Looping Pliers/ concave Pliers
One prong is a concave surface and the other is a round nose to give proper round loops.

flat nosed pliers,
this one also has serrated edges
like a chain nosed pliers.
- image source google

8. Flat Nosed Pliers
They have a broad tip and have surface, used usually to flatten surfaces or wires.

9. Crimping Pliers
They have small holes to be able to press the crimp on the wires. They utilise a specific technique to make the crimps look like beads and takes practice to handle. Personally I have only used a Needle nose plier for crimps to flatten my crimps.

Certain things to look out for in a pair of pliers

The Spring :

pronged spring

Firstly the spring loaded Pliers are more easily available and usually less expensive, give them a miss. Over a period of time the spring itself starts losing its springiness or worse yet, it comes out all together.I have personally faced both and since it's a tool we use almost everywhere, it makes more sense to invest in a Pliers once, but a good one. I suggest you buy the pronged type of pliers. There are also pliers available without the springs at all, may be a tad difficult to use but have other advantages.





The Metal:
The second thing to look for is the metal used. Currently I have two pliers I use myself, one is stainless steel and the other I bought after showing the first one, so I am guessing that too is the same. You get the more rudimentary ones, which in India are liable to rusting. The second advantage to good quality pliers is that they scratch less and have much smoother surfaces so the wires have less to no damage.

The tip:
A lot of times we need to make cuts or bends in a wire which require a very minimal tip to the pliers. After a lot of handicap I realised, having a fine the tip can be fragile at the same time very useful. In India I have found, the Pliers without a spring has a fine tip and most jewelers who deal in gold and silver jewelry also use it. But they may rust, so store them in a plastic box or a bag after use. It may also take some oiling once in a while.

The grip:
Its very important for the Pliers to not slip, there is a good chance you may injure your jewelry or worse yet, yourself. Rubber grips are the best or the ones with anti slip surfaces.
     
The cost of the pliers range anywhere from Rs 50/- up-to Rs 5000/-. Of-course the more expensive ones are largely not made (read sold) in India. Do not follow the misnomer, if they are from abroad they will be good, buy locally it is easier to procure another one if necessary without paying bucket-loads of money.  To recap, always keep two needle nosed pliers and a round nosed pliers in your tools box.

~ Reaching for my toolkit

Richa

P.S : If you have any questions regarding these tools or any other jewelry tools and if I am able to I will do my best to answer them. Post your queries in the comments below.