Recently, my 3 year old daughter has taken a large interest in my jewelry making. On several occasions now, she’s stated that when she grows up she wants to make jewelry like I do. So, being the encouraging mother that I am, I allowed her to start hanging out with me while I work on the simpler pieces.
Last week, I made her dreams come true. I have a large Ziplock baggie of my reject beads. You know.. the ones that have badly drilled holes, chips, cracks, badly dyed pearls, pearls missing nacre. It’s really a little treasure trove contained in a plastic bag. Many of these beads feature gigantic holes too, so.. I cut a 20” length of some 49 strand Soft Flex that I never use. I popped a bead stopper on the end of it, sat Francesca down with the baggie and told her to design a necklace.
Here we are, a week later and she will string, tear it apart and restring her beads. She informed me that she wants bigger pearls, because most of the reject ones are small. She also came in to me today as I was listing some new items on Etsy and let me know that she was going to help sell mommy’s jewelry and maybe sell her own.
The jewelry bug has bitten, and bitten her hard. I think for Christmas I will order some of the funky bead mixes that Fire Mountain Gems offers and see how that goes over with her.
