Toolbox Jewelry Making Kits
Jewelry Making Kits |
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In the following paragraphs, we discuss these kits in more detail.
We now have three wire and beads jewelry making kits. They are our Internet Starter Kit, our Beginner's Kit, and our WigJig Recommends Kit. We will describe these three kits in greater detail below. Internet Starter Jewelry Making Kit:
The Internet Starter Kit is designed to provide the tools and supplies necessary to make the four earrings shown above. This kit is focused on people who are comfortable using the Internet to obtain the instructions for making these four earrings, as there is no printed instructions included in the kit. The instructions are provided on our web site and in our free video lessons in jewelry making. Please select here to view our instructions for making the four different earrings that the tools and supplies in this kit will enable you to make. You can view the items included in our Internet Starter Kit here:
Advantages: This kit includes everything you need to get started making some basic earrings. This kit is moderately priced and if you are comfortable with using the Internet is an excellent way to get started making jewelry that you can wear. Disadvantages: The instructions for this kit are only available via the Internet. The kit does not include components for making bracelets or necklaces. This kit does not include Super Pegs or a Spiral Maker. Beginner's Kit:Our Beginner's Kit is focused on people who want more instructions than we provide with our Internet Starter Kit. The Beginner's Kit includes both a book with 180 pages of patterns that can be made on our jigs along with a DVD that shows a couple of jewelry projects. Included with this kit are the following items:
Notably this kit does not include any beads or any findings like the head pin and ear wire findings found in the Internet Starter Kit. It is likely that one will need to purchase some beads and findings along with this kit in order to be ready to make jewelry. Because the Beginner's Kit does not include an beads or findings, there are no specific jewelry projects that we can point to that you can make with this kit, other than the project that is taught in the DVD. You can view the bracelet made on the DVD at right. Advantages: This kit includes a DVD and book and is therefore more suitable for people who aren't comfortable learning from the Internet. This kit also includes Super Pegs and Spiral Maker. Disadvantages: This kit is focused on training people to use our WigJig jewelry making tools and wire. It does not include the beads, findings and other components necessary for making any jewelry. WigJig Recommends Wire & Beads Jewelry Making Kit:Some people want to get started in a new hobby and already know that they like the hobby and want to do it right. For the person who wants to start with better quality tools, but still wants the economy of buying the tools in a kit, we have our WigJig Recommends kit. This kit includes only tools that we use ourselves. We recommend all the tools included with the kit, hence the name. The kit does include some wire and head pin findings to get you started, but it does not include ear wires or beads for making your first jewelry project. The tools and supplies included in this kit are:
Purchase of this kit represents a 19% discount over purchase of the items in the kit individually. You can view this kit in our Internet store by selecting here. Advantages: This kit includes quality hand tools that should last for years. This kit also includes Super Pegs and Spiral Maker. Disadvantages: This kit does not include any printed instructions. It also does not include the beads, findings and other components necessary for making any jewelry. In the interest of total disclosure, there are some tools that we use, but were not included in this kit. We did not include the following tools in this kit. We recommend the tools below, but not everyone will need all of these tools.
Finally, with the items in the kit alone you can make some chain bracelets and necklaces, but to make earrings and projects with beads you may need to also purchase ear wire findings and beads.
Gemstone Jewelry Making KitsWe currently have 44 gemstone jewelry making kits that we call "Bling Kits" in our Internet store. Some of these kits require bent chain nose pliers to complete, while some other kits can benefit from having bent chain nose pliers. If you currently have bent chain nose pliers or chain nose pliers, you won't need anything additional. If you don't have bent chain nose pliers, we recommend Item 4002. You can view all of our gemstone jewelry making kits here, or you can view any individual kit by selecting the picture or the name of the kit below. The prices for all of these kits are each less than $30 and many are less than $16, but because the prices change as the price of the materials increases or decreases, you will need to view that kit in our Internet store to see our current price for that kit.
For any of our Bling gemstone jewelry kits shown above, we recommend that you also purchase a leatherette box for the earrings should you plan on either selling the earrings or using them as a gift. The leatherette box, shown at left, is our Item 3251 and costs about $2.00. You can view this box in our Internet store by selecting the picture at right or by selecting the item number in the text above. This box is sold separately and is not included in the kits. With these kits, we don't have the option of changing the gemstone to another type as a kit, but we do have the option of purchasing the components separately and instead of purchasing the gemstone indicated in the kit, you can replace that with any other gemstone in the same size. You can view our entire selection of gemstones by selecting here and following the links on the resulting web page. Many people are not familiar with the term "Gold Filled". Gold filled wire and jewelry making findings are the very newest technology in jewelry and are difficult to find outside of the US and Europe. Gold filled has nothing to do with filing anything with gold nor is it anything like gold-plated. Gold filled wire and findings are made by mechanically squeezing a gold wire around a gold colored wire. For the 14/20 gold filled findings below, the outer 5% of the finding is made of 14 karat gold alloy. The "20" number means that 1/20th by weight of this finding is 14 karat gold alloy. This means that the part of the wire that you can see, touch and feel is real 14 k gold alloy. The inside of the findings is a gold colored metal, but you can't and won't be able to view that metal unless you physically destroy the jewelry by cutting it in half. In comparison, gold plated wire and findings have a thickness of 24 karat gold of about 2 molecules of gold. By contrast, gold filled wire and findings have a thickness of gold of about 1,000,000 molecules. This thickness is easily thick enough that the gold alloy won't scratch off, flake off or wear off. We strongly believe that there is no point in purchasing solid gold findings, when you can purchase the same finding in gold-filled at a fraction of the cost. We believe that when people understand what gold filled is and how it stands up to wear and tear, that they will never want solid gold again. (Solid gold is wasteful of gold. You can't see or touch the gold in the center of the wire so why pay for it?) This doesn't mean that solid gold will disappear in the future for the simple reason that some findings can only be made by casting and it is not possible to cast gold filled components at this time. Before you review our gemstone kits, let's discuss our prices. We could easily double the prices on these kits and they would still be an outstanding value. We have found Internet shops selling the same gemstones that we sell at 10 to 15 times our prices. One fear that we have is that customers will think that because we charge such a low price that it also means the product is a lower quality. Unfortunately, for most people, these prices seem to good to be true. We can only say that we want to sell a lot of these products so we have not raised our prices as much as we could. We import most of the gemstones that we sell directly from the manufacturer in China. The findings we purchase directly from the manufacturer in the US. There are no middle men between us and the factory. We don't have a jewelry store with a high overhead. We don't package these products in a fancy container that you will discard as soon as you have opened it. This is the same approach that WalMart uses and we are just using it on a small scale here. If you think that these prices are too good to be true, you won't have to spend much to place a trial order. Our experience is that people who order these items once, order more. They are very, very reasonably priced and they are simple to assemble. After your first order, please tell your friends.
Pearl Beads Jewelry Making KitsWe have several kits for making post style earrings out of 1/2 drilled pearl beads and findings. All of these kits require a jeweler's file or nail file and glue similar to Item 0359, GS Hypo-Tube Cement to complete the kit. The files and glue are sold separately and is not included in the kit. To view all of our pearl beads earrings jewelry making kits in our Internet store please select here. To view any individual kit, please select either the picture or the item number for the kit in the left hand column below. Because prices for the kits change as the value of the dollar and the price of silver and gold change, we can not quote exact prices for these kits here. Our goal with these kits is to keep the prices below $5 each. Please visit each kit in our Internet store to view the exact price for that kit. Again, to view any kit in our Internet store and to see our current pricing, please select the name of the kit or the picture of the kit in the table below. Like our gemstone kits, we purchase the finding to make these kits directly from the manufacturer and therefore are prices are very, very reasonable.
Our kits are currently limited to white Swarovski Glass Pearl Beads. We sell the Swarovski 1/2 drilled pearl beads in colors of white, cream rose, light grey, rose or pink, gold, and black. To view all of these colors and the available sizes of our 1/2 drilled pearl beads please select here. If you want to make these pearl beads earrings in colors other than white, you can purchase the individual components for the earrings and substitute the color of pearl beads that you want. At this time we are not able to have bead kits in all colors. We will add kits with other color pearl beads as we understand the demand for these kits.
Bead Stringing Kit
For those of you who want to get into making necklaces and bracelets by stringing beads, we have a bead stringing kit. In the olden days, people would make beaded necklaces by stringing beads onto silk thread and knotting the silk thread between each bead. The reason for the knot between each bead is that it is not a question of whether the silk thread will break, it is only a question of when. Glass beads, pearl beads and metal beads are all significantly harder than silk and the action of wearing the necklace or bracelet causes the beads to spin and move against the silk. Over time, that motion causes abrasion and ultimately parting of the silk. In fact, even gold and silver wire used to make a necklace or bracelet can be sawed apart by glass beads if worn long enough. In the 1990's technology created a solution to this problem when the Soft Flex Company developed their bead stringing wire. There are two major advantages of using this new technology solution -- first, since the bead stringing wire does not break, you won't have to knot between each bead, and second, since you don't have to tie the time consuming knots, you can make an attractive necklace in a fraction of the time. We believe that knotting silk thread is a wonderful skill, just as spinning your own thread from raw cotton or wool is a wonderful skill; but we aren't going to recommend that anyone who is new to making jewelry start with this archaic approach. This long introduction is our way of explaining why our Beads Stringing Kit is a kit that will get a newcomer to stringing beads started with today's technology by stringing the beads on bead stringing wire with no knotting required. This beads stringing kit will include the tools, beads and supplies to make the pearl necklace shown above-right. The pearl beads that we will use are made by Swarovski and are the best imitation pearls available. Between each pearl bead, we string a "seed bead". The seed bead simulates the knot in the silk thread so that the necklace will appear identical to pearl beads on knotted silk, but will be more permanent. Included in our beads stringing kit will be the following:
View our instructions for assembling this kit starting here. If this kit is to be a gift, you may want to print our two sheets of instructions and include them with the gift. Select here to view our easy to print Adobe Acrobat instructions for assemblying this kit. Purchased individually the items in this kit retail for over $45. Initially we are selling the items in this kit as a package for $43.89. Please select here to view this kit in our Internet store and view our latest price. Our ability to meet our price target will change over time as the price of silver and the value of the dollar changes.
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18 feet of 20 Gauge Silver-Plated Artistic Wire (
WigJig Centaur Lite (
