I first learned of
House of Gems when I stumbled on a tutorial that they were sharing on Slideshare. They are a 28 year old California based jewelry supply company which prides itself with offering products at wholesale prices. They accomplish this by eliminating the middlemen and sourcing directly from manufacturers. Since 2009, they are entirely an online business.
They sent me some supplies from their pave selection for review. Anyone who loves bling will love pave beads as the crystals are set close to each other for the uber effect! I especially love the pave tubes because they make good focals for necklaces.
I must confess many of my initial ideas fail. It is actually good to fail because the attempt is a learning experience and on trying again, the design path becomes clearer.
I thought the wonderful delicate but strong stainless steel chain would work to string the components as it was fine enough to pass through the holes. Metal beads on either side of the pave tube would help center it. But it all seemed so ordinary and not enough pizazz for this beautiful focal. So the stainless steel chain will have to wait for a future design!
In the end what I did was to make some wire coils and deliberately curved them. This made the necklace better fit the curve of the neck and looked cool too!
I had originally planned to use the crystals I received for the spool knitted wire portion of the gold pave necklace. But when I started playing with them, I decided on other more gold tone glass seed beads.
I made just simple dangles with the small gold pave crystals but added brass elven or elvish ear wires. Doing something different with part of the design makes it unique.
Note that " House of Gems imports from all over the world, but 95% of the chains and findings are made in the United States. In an effort to reward customers, House of Gems has a Frequent Buyers' Discount program in place that begins accumulating from your very first purchase and is automatically implemented by the site itself. There are also quantity discounts in place and they offer a lot of other promotional coupons via our Social Media sites." Giveaway
If you would like to win $75 worth of jewelry making supplies from House of Gems, please make a comment below. Make sure you leave contact info if you do not have an online shop or blog.
Subscribers need to click on the post title to come to my actual blog. Scroll down and enter your comment. Pick Name/URL. If you don't have a store or blog, leave the URL blank.
This giveaway is international.
Extra entries if you become or are a blog subscriber or follower etc. If you also do shout outs about this giveaway, those will count as additional entries too! Please say so in the comments.
It ends in a week's time at 6 pm EST Monday, July 7, 2014 . I will pick the winner randomly and announce the results as soon as possible after. So be sure to leave a contact email if you don't have an online link or make sure you come back and check! Otherwise I will redraw in a week. Good luck!
Disclosure Before You Go: ______________________________
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