The Hunt
The most fun part of making jewelry with vintage and old or broken jewelry is finding the materials to work with. There is a chance to find something to use almost everywhere I go. Flea markets are my favorite place to look. There are always vendors with a good selection of costume jewelry to comb through. If my husband isn’t rushing me I like to take my time so I can really think about the possibilities of all the pieces. I look to see which parts could be easily taken apart, if there are charms or clasps I could use for something else, and if I could easily attach other components to it. I’ll gather everything I think I could use and see what price the seller will give me. My husband is a good negotiator so he comes in handy at this part. I make sure they give me a receipt because, business. Then repeat with all of the other jewelry vendors.
Thrift stores are another great place because I can sometimes find things that aren’t necessarily vintage, but I can get some good stuff to just upcycle. With these pieces I can add them to something vintage to make it more special. And since I’m already there I’ll take a stroll through the black tees to see if anything calls my name. It usually does. Vintage stores are also a major source of my jewelry findings. Depending on how curated the place is the pieces will be more expensive, but usually more special. Here I’m sometimes able to get the backstory on a piece of vintage jewelry or a vintage charm. I can find out where or when it came from to give the final piece more meaning.
A huge source of my materials is looking online for detash jewelry or jewelry lots. This is when you basically get a mystery grab bag of jewelry. You can buy it by the pound and it’s the most exciting thing to get in the mail. I know I said flea markets are my favorite, but I think it’s actually this. I love searching through the box and seeing what I got. Not everything can be used, but I get tons of things to work with this way. A lot of it I never would have chosen on its own, but it’s a fun challenge to figure out how to incorporate it into a design. I usually get these detash goodies from Etsy or Ebay. I also get a ton of vintage jewelry from there too. There are so many sellers with huge stashes of costume jewelry just waiting for someone with a little creativity to take it off their hands. I love searching for all the materials because it gets my juices going and it’s so good to know I have a ton of options to work with.
