Fashion Inexpensive Jewelry

Q.For the past year or so I've been checking out the bead stores in cities that I travel to on business. Most of them are pretty dreadful (craft/ cheap junk oriented), but some have the components to make high quality fashion jewelry (ruby, aquamarine, tourmaline beads,etc.)... the wonderful stuff we lust after in Vogue, Vanity Fair, In Style... The places that have the great components usually have someone available that can put together just about anything I want for a fraction of what I'd pay at Nordies or the other places I usually shop. I particularly like Lost Cities in San Diego and Beadazzled in the D.C. area. Anyone else having similar good luck? If so, what did you have made and where?

A.I buy Japanese glass seed beads and have made literally hundreds of bracelets and necklaces. The colors and quality of the Japanese beads are terrific. I also have made 2 Swarovski crystal bracelets for myself. I want to make more, but there is a world wide shortage on the Swarovski crystal right now. I made my granddaughter a rose quartz power bracelet, and also a blue cat's eye bracelet. It's actually very easy to make the jewelry yourself. Plus, you can sure save yourself a lot of money that way. There are plenty of books available to learn to do it yourself. This is so ironic that y'all mentioned this....a friend of mine and I have started making nearly *all* of our own jewelry. We've discovered a couple of great, inexpensive bead supply stores in town (Rock Barrel in Dallas), and we have both made many many bracelets, earrings, necklaces, etc. We even have "bead night" where we'll just hang out for an evening making jewelry! We're going to the Dallas Jewelry and Gem show at the end of April, just for grins, to see what they have to offer.... I see so many of those "power bead" bracelets and other items for $25 to $100 each, and I'm always thinking WHY? I can get an long strand of beautiful glass beads for sometimes $2 or even less. I have noticed that Swarovski crystals can be somewhat pricey, but they're the most beautiful!

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