Maybe you’ve always liked to work with jewelry-making tools and jewelry supplies and you’ve wondered what it would be like to become a jewelry designer. Maybe you already have ideas in your head that you’ve sketched out, but you don’t know if they’ll actually work. You may have already started to take a jewelry making class, just out of curiosity, but now, the process has taken hold of you. Now, you know this is what you want to do professionally, but you’re not sure how to get started. Let’s talk.
Learn How to Make Jewelry
Before you begin to design jewelry, you have to know how to make it. If you’re scratching your head, thinking, “but I’ll have assistants to do that!” slow down for just a minute. You probably have dozens, if not hundreds of designs cluttering your head and sketchpads. That’s wonderful! What you’ve drawn out looks beautiful, but how do you know that what you’ve sketched out will work in 3D? Some of them may, but others may not.
This is why you need to learn the basics of jewelry making. From beading to working with wire, pliers, beads and inexpensive stones, you need to know that a design idea you had will translate to the real-life version. Will you be able to connect the stones in that way you dreamed up? At the beginning, probably not. Once you start taking jewelry making classes, you’ll learn all those methods.
Get Your Hands Dirty
Don’t be afraid to get in there with your designs. Keep your sketches close by and start creating. Cut wire and wrap it around stones. With supervision, start soldering metal and creating new shapes. Make mistakes. This is how you’re going to learn.
Find community education jewelry design classes in your town. Sign up for them, show up to every class, learn, and practice the methods your instructor teaches. This is only the beginning for you, but it’ll give you a good basis for deciding if this is really what you want to do as a career.
Create Those Designs
If you decide to take a beginning jewelry making class, speak to your instructor privately and ask her if she can teach you how to design jewelry. She should be able to show you the basics. Of course, she may suggest that you take a jewelry design course that she or a fellow jewelry design instructor teaches.
If she agrees to help you learn how to create those design sketches, she’ll help you relate what you draw to real-life designs. Another reason you need to know how to make jewelry: Knowing the principles of design and color will make it easier for you to sketch designs that may actually work out.
Finding Jewelry Design Schools
Once you’ve been designing and making jewelry, you’ll have a better idea about whether you want to pursue this as a living. Now it’s time for you to start researching the jewelry design programs at schools in your state, as well as across the country–or around the world.
Becoming a jewelry designer will take several years. If you want to have a better chance of getting into a good program and becoming a designer, you have to take those first steps and learn how to make your own jewelry. Majestical can provide inspiration to help you get an idea of the kind of jewelry you could design.
Written by Samantha Ayres. Samantha works for Majestical, and online boutique, and is located in Charleston, South Carolina.