Yesterday I received a comment that brought home to me (again!) just how powerful videos are for learning how to make jewelry.

Here’s what a beginner jewelry maker said about my beginner bead jewelry making video course:

“Hi Eri, Thank you so much for the beginner course. I am a semi retired physician and since 3 of my 4 children are married, I have been trying to find courses in jewelry making in the web. I subscribe to newsletters but wasn’t able to do even 1 piece of jewelry. I felt so unartistic. Glad to know about you and jewelry making professor in Jennifer VanBenschoten newsletter and I have done a 4 leaf clover pendant with your instruction. My son said it’s fabulous. I am trying to do some more projects after I shop for more materials. I thought I can not do a piece and now I feel I can do it. You and your videos are a great help. Thanks so much.”

As I’ve said many times before, there are some people who will have no problem learning how to make jewelry by looking at patterns and books.

However, there are many people that just will not be able to learn that way. It just depends on how your brain works.

For the people who are “2 dimensional challenged” it’s great that technology has advanced to the point where we can offer recorded jewelry making classes streamed over the internet right to the desktop or laptop of the student.

It makes it possible for so many more people to get involved and learn to enjoy the wonderful craft of jewelry making.

If you are interested in giving jewelry making a try I recommend you try my 7-part video course called “Bead Jewelry Making for the Clueless Jewelry Artist WannaBe.”

The seven videos will enable you to master the basics of bead jewelry making.

To sign up for the course all you need to do is register for our free Beginner Gold Membership program and you will gain immediate access to the videos.

Here’s the link to sign up: Learn How to Make Beaded Jewelry

Happy Beading!

Rena Klingenberg was nice enough to put information about my breast cancer awareness jewelry videos on her blog.

You can have a look here: Breast Cancer Awareness Jewelry Making Videos

While you are over at Rena’s blog I encourage you to look around at the excellent information and resources she offers.

Rena is an expert at many jewelry making topics, but I’ve always especially admired her knowledge about how to make money selling your handmade jewelry.

If you have a small business making and selling jewelry, I highly recommend you get the resources that she offers on her websites.

I used to sell jewelry at many craft shows and I picked up many great money-making tips from Rena’s training materials.

Rena’s information is clear, concise, and will give you a better chance to make money with your jewelry business.

Hi Everyone.

I just wanted to update you on my 3 Day Walk for Breast Cancer adventure.

The weather in Philadelphia was so poor that they actually cancelled the first two days of the walk.

So our three day walk turned into a one day walk.

Nonetheless, we all gathered together yesterday and had a great walk on a chilly windy day.

This was my second walk and I am so honored to participate in this event with fellow breast cancer survivors and our supporters.

In all, we raised around $8 million for breast cancer causes.

I want to thank everyone for your support!

Please remember that through the end of this month you can watch my free bead jewelry making videos showing how to make breast cancer awareness and pink ribbon jewelry.

Here is the link to watch those videos: Pink Ribbon Jewelry Videos

Also, my friend at About.com, Jennifer VanBenschoten, wrote a quick note on her blog about my breast cancer awareness jewelry making videos.

You can see that here: Breast Cancer Awareness Jewelry Making Video

While you’re over there, please look around the site. Jennifer has a ton of great resources that will help you with your beading and jewelry making.

I have a new jewelry making video available showing how to make a Florence Ring.

I created this design based on a basic criss cross technique combined with different sized swarovski crystal beads.

I played around with the size gradation of the beads using 3mm, 4mm, 5mm, and 6mm, and the criss cross technique until I created a kind of heart shape with the ring.

The first time through the design I wasn’t satisfied with the final shape so what I did at the bottom of the ring was create a picot design with seed beads.

The picot shape gave a more complete heart design which I really liked.

I thought the shape of the ring had kind of a nostalgic classic look so I decided to combine bead colors to give it more of a vintage feel.

The way I did that was by using satin coated crystal beads and metallic colored seed beads.

I think the result has a nice vintage feel to it.

For the band of the ring I used a very simple thin design, but you can use a thicker band design if you like.

Another thing I thought was interesting when I put on this ring was that it makes my finger look longer because of the V-cut design of the ring.

I’m not sure that’s all that important but when you have short fingers like I do, it’s kind of nice!

Here is a preview of the Florence Ring jewelry making video:

If you are interested in more details about the full length video you can find information here:

Florence Ring Jewelry Making Video

I just introduced a new jewelry making video showing how to make a torsade necklace.

Torsade is a french word, the “tors” part meaning twisted.

A torsade was a decoration that emerged in the 19th century as a twisted ribbon or chord that was used primarily to decorate hats.

The word is now used to describe decorative things that have some kind of twisted motif.

In this necklace design I primarily used 4mm swarovski pearls, but you will notice that the necklace “sparkles” a little more than usual.

That’s because I use a sneaky little trick where I also mix a few swarovski crystal beads in with the pearls. You can’t really tell unless you look at the necklace up close, but I really like the effect it has on the necklace.

When you mix in the swarovski crystal beads the key is to make sure that the beads are a similar color to the pearls.

In terms of the colors of the pearls, you can try different things but my approach was simply to have one strand be a strong color, one strand be a weak color, and one strand be something in between.

You can vary your color selection to create very different looks. You will notice in the picture above that one necklace with the golden color pearls would look very nice with an autumn outfit, while the other that uses the white and light blue pearls has more of a spring and summer feel to it.

Why did I choose only three strands?

You can do more than three, but when you twist the necklace into a torsade it will start to look very bulky if you go much beyond three strands.

Also, when possible I like to create jewelry pieces that have multiple functions. With this necklace you can choose not to twist it into a torsade shape and instead just wear it as a three strand necklace. I think if you had more than three strands in that situation it would start to look too busy, so three seemed just right for my personal preference.

I learned with this necklace that one of the keys to the torsade is to use a magnetic clasp. Once you twist the necklace into the torsade shape by holding one end of the necklace and twisting the other end, I noticed when I used a clasp that was not a magnetic clasp that the twist sometimes came out after time passed. This doesn’t seem to happen with the magnetic clasp so I recommend using one.

There a large variety of magnetic clasps, but if you are looking for some very interesting designs I recommend you check out a company called Clasp On-Clasp Off.

I found them at the Bead Fest show in Philadelphia and they have some wonderful magnetic clasp designs as well as many other clasps.

Also, as I’m sure you can guess, it is very easy to add a torsade bracelet and make a necklace bracelet set by just shortening the length of three strands you create.

I have had some customers do that and create jewelry that looks beautiful to wear to weddings for example.

Here is a preview of the torsade necklace jewelry making class:

If you are interested in getting this video you can find it here: Torsade Necklace Video

At Jewelry Making Professor, we offer many jewelry making patterns and beading patterns on video.

Some of these patterns we offer free of charge so that you can try out learing jewelry making by using videos to see if it’s right for you.

We have a number of free jewelry making videos covering bracelet patterns, necklace patterns, earring patterns, ring patterns, and even a few videos that teach different styles of jewelry making as well as some unusual beaded motifs.

If you haven’t yet tried making jewelry using online videos then I encourage you to give these free beading videos a try.

I think you’ll be surprised by how effective this learning method is.

You can view all the videos in our free video library anywhere, anytime as long as you have high speed internet access like DSL, cable, or fibre.

Please head on over to this page to take a look at the videos we have available for free viewing:

Free Beading and Jewelry Patterns

I will continue to add videos to the free section so please check back often to see what’s new.

October is breast cancer awareness month.

I am a breast cancer survivor so this month has special meaning to me.

I want to do all I can to help raise awareness about breast cancer and help raise funds to eventually cure this disease.

To that end, my husband and I are participating in the Philadelphia 3 Day walk for breast cancer this month.

Breast cancer survivors and thousands of their supporters will walk about 20 miles a day for three days straight to help raise awareness and to raise money for the cause.

60 miles is such a long way that I hope you will be thinking about me and praying for me. I will need it!

The other way I want to give back this month is to offer my breast cancer awareness jewelry video tutorials for free viewing until the end of October.

I would be so grateful if you could make and wear pink ribbon jewelry as often as you can this month.

Every little bit of awareness helps.

There are four videos I have for you to watch.

Two of these beading videos are beginner level and show how to make a 3 Day walk charm necklace and a pair of pink ribbon earrings.

One video is an intermediate level video showing how to make a pink ribbon broach which you can wear as a pink ribbon pin.

The fourth video is an advanced level video showing how to make a pink ribbon puffy heart.

I hope you will enjoy them all, and thank you so much for your support.

Here is the link to the page with the videos: Breast Cancer Awareness Jewelry Tutorials