Write What You Know Part One

How It All Started...Or I've just always been like this...

I read an article from somewhere that mentioned that you should write what you are familiar with and I thought, "Well, I know jewelry.  I’ve been making it since I was a child. I started out in Encinitas, California. I remember restringing one of my mother’s necklaces. Later on I remember buying ¼ inch balsa wood strips and gluing them together to make little earring racks for my mother. Then I took narrow velvet ribbon and covered the wood. I remember using some blue ribbon and some orange ribbon. I made one like a tree shape and one in a diagonal box shape.  I really don’t know how I made the holes for the ear posts. I probably just used a needle to punch through it because balsa wood is so soft.

Moving along, as my family did to San Clemente, California, I was around 13 years old and my friend DeeDee was making earrings out of beads. Somehow we convinced our parents to let us take a bus to the Laguna Beach Bead Shop. I bought little filigreed parts, fine chain, and beads. DeeDee showed me how to glue the beads on the chains, and hang them from the filigree pieces. I started making them and selling the finished earrings to my classmates.

Here's a sample of a filigree finding similar to what we were using back then. It's amazing that some of the same shapes are still in production.

I've come a long way since then...

Copyright Laura M. Wilson  All Rights Reserved