handmade jewelry, pearl earring My sister and I are into arts and crafts, and we were discussing our next project and decided to get into making handmade jewelry. I have more free time than she does, so I started looking online today at sites that have good buys on jewelry, looking for ideas. I ran across a strand of pearls by accident and thought that it would be a fine basis for starting to build our handmade jewelry supplies. It's beautiful on its own, but we want to make our own, so I ordered the Endless Freshwater Pearl Necklace. It's an amazing 100" long. That is an incredibly inexpensive way to get real fresh water pearls for our handmade jewelry.

Each of those pearls will cost us pennies compared to buying them at a craft store where the pearls may not even be authentic. We'd even discussed scouring thrift stores, but when I can cruise the web and get brand new gems for our handmade jewelry so inexpensively, I won't have to bother getting in the car and taking my chances at finding something this nice. It prompted me to keep looking around for other things that we can get to make our handmade jewelry.

My sister is a teacher so she's incredibly busy during the school year, but has a week off coming up soon for Spring Break and we are going to spend some time getting started on our new project. I emailed her the photo of the 100" of the Endless Freshwater Pearl Necklace and she was really excited about getting started. We have no idea what we will do with these pearls. They may become part of a set of pearl earrings or even a necklace or even a choker. I found these pearls at Purple Rose Candles and Gifts at www.purplerosecandlesandgifts.com/, a site with a lot of nice jewelry and even candles. I couldn't believe my good luck at finding this long necklace. One hundred inches is equal to eight feet, and each of these pearls is about a quarter inch apiece, so that is approximately 320 pearls.

The pearl necklace should be here in a week or so, and I may wait to snip the thread to loosen all pearls until I get to my sister's house so we can use her digital video camera to record the event. I have broken necklaces by accident in the past and it's a visual and audio event, but when there are 320 pearls that will come cascading off the string, it will be something to experience. It's step one in our handmade jewelry adventure and probably the most dramatic of moments in the quiet craft of making handmade jewelry, so I want to share the experience with her and the kids.