Transcript
Courtney Gray: Welcome to Creative Side Jewelry Academy of Austin, online at creativeside.org. I’m Courtney Gray. I started my school here, Creative Side Jewelry Academy, four years ago. I’m here in Austin, and I’m going to tell you about jewelry making today.
Jewelry Making: Getting Started
My name is Courtney Gray, and I’m going to talk to you about getting started in jewelry making. The first thing you’re going to need is some jewelry designs, so start sketching. When you set up at home, think about that. What do I need, what do I want to create? Am I working in metal, am I working in wax, am I working with beads or wire wrapping?
After you have designs, you can worry about tools and where you’re going to work. You’re going to need a nice space to work; you do not need a jeweler’s bench. Start at your kitchen table. When I got started, I was in my garage here in Texas, but I found that from necessity, I figured out what exactly I needed for that process.
You’re going to need to get a bench pin, and that is a little piece of wood that’s been shaped into something like this and you can clamp that down to any surface. This gives you a nice solid surface to push your metal against as you work it. It also helps control sawing, so a lot of times jewelers will cut a grove in here so when you’re sawing, your saw blade has somewhere to go. This kit that I’m showing you here from Rio Grande, one of the top supply companies in the country, comes with this table clamp. So, this will actually clamp to any surface and you can use it really anywhere. As you go along you’re going to discover what you need, so don’t feel like you need a whole bunch of things to start, you can get started right away.
