The Jewelry Designer’s Orientation To Metals, Metal Beads, and Oxidizing

Enroll in my jewelry design and business of craft video tutorials online. Begin with my ORIENTATION TO BEADS & JEWELRY FINDINGS COURSE. There are 18 video modules including handouts, which this is one of.

JEWELERY FINDINGS AND METALS

When working with metals, it is important to know what the metal is, and what happens to it over time, and if it has some kind of coating, what that is, and what happens to that over time.

Metals give jewelry substance. Richness. Power. Weight and weightiness. They set the tone for perceptions of power and wealth. They frame the even-more-impressive precious and semi-precious stones and enhance their beauty, or make non-precious materials seem precious, even though they are not.

Metals, metals, metals. Jewelry design can be so much fun, but, sometimes, the metals don’t behave like they should or were originally intended. For instance, they don’t always keep their color. Sometimes the color fades, sometimes it wears off, sometimes it merely gets dirty. If it’s gotten dirty, it’s not always so obvious how to bring the color and shine back. Some metals dent and bend. Others crumble or break. And if you have too many metal pieces all lined up in a row, tightly kept in that row, and with little…