Brilliance is said to be about one part inspiration and nine parts perspiration. OF those nine parts, about six are figuring out where to get the supplies to make your vision an (affordable) reality.
Leveraging your creativity to build custom jewelry starts with your supplies. To make something interesting (that you can potentially turn a profit on) you need to think of unique places to secure jewelry making supplies.
Foruantualey, you live in a consumer world that has no lack of STUFF. You just need to find the stuff that fits your needs.
Jewelry Making Supplies and Suppliers
The following places to look for jewelry supplies require equal amounts of vision and time.
Expect to make more than a few trips to each source and gather supplies as they strike your fancy. It’s better to have a surplus of materials than a surplus of unobtainable ideas.
- Shop Online
The first place to look for supplies is online. There are many many collections of items out there, which makes the searching easy and the finding hard.
If you have a specific idea in mind, you want to focus on keyword searches that narrow your selection process.
If you are looking for inspiration, try searching by material type or color consistency, and go from there.
For example, this collection of beads offers items centered around materials perfect for rustic concepts.
- Craft Stores
Craft stores are another great stop for a jewelry making kit or surplus supplies.
Craft stores go through stock quickly, so you will want to make a bi-monthly or seasonal circuit to catch new items as they hit the shelves.
Remember that anything can be turned into jewelry, so don’t stop at the beads and the trinkets. Consider the paints, the foam, and the wood areas for things you can tone down or miniaturize for jewelry applications.
- Hardware Stores
A hardware store is a craft store with slightly shinier and more angular stock.
The items on the shelves don’t change much, so you only need to hit a hardware store when looking for something specific, but they do offer a lot of small objects at low low prices.
Hardware stores are also great places to shop for after-effects such as aging and weathering. They also offer a lot of useful tools for jewelry construction.
- Thrift Stores
For the deepest of DIY dives, go to a thrift store and pick up old and out-of-date style jewelry. A few minutes with some pliers and scissors yields a lot of raw materials that can be repurposed.
While you’re there, take a swing through the toy aisle and you can also score some organizers and boxes to help keep your jewelry beads and supplies neat and tidy aroudn the shop.
- Yard Sales
Yard sales work like thrift stores but with more digging through broken appliances.
If you’re really lucky, you can even score ex-family members that can become jewelry centerpieces.
Find More
The best places to find jewelry making supplies are the places other people aren’t looking. In the past, jewelry was constructed of whatever people found, and that tradition lives on now.
Speaking of sorting through tidbits, keep coming back here for more bobbles about your wold.
