With so many silver beads and charms around me, sometimes I feel silly for wanting more. I often make requests for a shape or image I want and hope that customers call and email saying they would like the same thing so that it might get produced. I’ve learned, however, that the easiest way for me to satisfy my craving for new and exciting items is to gold plate them. I also love oxidizing silver for a less expensive alteration. It is amazing how much the feel of an item can change by switching up the color of the metal.
Recently a customer had the small elephant bead gold plated. I loved it so much I sent some out with our next gold plate order even though I didn’t know how I was going to work with them. When my elephant beads returned from the platers it was a Friday and I rushed home with a couple feet of silver chain to make something special to wear that night. I was going to just space the five elephants out on the chain and oxidize the chain to make them pop. I realized after I cut the chain to the spacing I liked that I didn’t want my middle elephant to lay on his side so I dug through my bead collection to work around not having any headpins handy. I found a small green teardrop agate, a discontinued Nina Designs bead and with a few small gemstones made one of my most favorite necklaces to date.
To read more on how you can have any of our silver items plated in 24K gold, please see our Gold Special Order Policy.
Inspired Elephant Necklace
Detail of Elephant Drop
Detail of Elephant Beads
Our little silver bow charm is actually a jewelry link you can use on earrings and necklaces. It turns any silver charm into a gift. See for yourself. Attach any of our wonderful woodland charms, like acorns and pinecones, to the sterling silver bow. Our birdcages look adorable all wrapped up in a sterling silver bow too! Who would’ve thought so many of our charms would look so much more magical with a bow on top? Plus, it’s so easy, and you end up with a little present you can wear everyday. You just want to be careful of the proportion between the bow and the charm. You don’t want a charm that’s too big or too small for the bow. But good news. We are designing a bigger bow! And, we’ll have this exact little bow in vermeil style gold plate in just a few weeks. Check back soon!
Wrap it with a Silver Bow!
Happy Holidays
Congratulations from the Nina Designs crew for making it through another crazy holiday season. We know how hard jewelry designers work to create and market beautiful jewelry for the holiday season. Now it’s time to rest, celebrate family and friends, count our blessings, and ring in the new year. Happy Hanukkah! Merry Christmas! Happy Kwanzaa!
Over time, any sterling silver jewelry findings exposed to air will tarnish. Sterling silver is 92.5% silver and 7.5% other metals. It is the other metals, primarily copper, that makes sterling silver tarnish. The copper reacts to the moisture and sulfur in the air, causing sterling silver to tarnish. Silver tarnishes faster in areas with high humidity and air pollution. Chemicals (hairspray, perfume, deodorant, body lotion, bleach, etc) as well as acidic foods can speed up the tarnishing process.
Properly storing silver will help prevent it from tarnishing.
- The best way to prevent tarnishing is to store clean, dry sterling silver in a dry airtight container, like a ziplock bag.
- An anti-tarnish strip with the silver jewelry in a ziplock bag will help fight against tarnish.
- Don’t leave silver jewelry in the bathroom, and do not wear it the shower, swimming pool or hot tub. Humidity can speed up the oxidation process that produces tarnish.
- Minimize sterling silver’s contact to chemicals (hairspray, perfume, body lotion, bleach, etc.).
- After taking off silver jewelry, clean it with a dry soft cloth before putting it back into an airtight container.
- Do not use rubber bands to bundle jewelry because when rubber bands age, they release sulfur that causes tarnishing.
- A general rule of thumb for silver jewelry: it should be the last thing put on before leaving the house, and the first thing removed when returning home.
To read our recommendations for cleaning silver, click the link below.
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Designing your jewelry display can be very challenging. I want to share some tips that helped me come up with my recent, and most cohesive, jewelry display set up. The first tip is to consider your color scheme. Don’t make it too chaotic – choose just 2 or 3 colors to involve in your display. I chose a neutral gray and tan combination. I enjoyed how my oxidized jewelry was complimented by the gray fabric I used for my table covering. More importantly, I recognized how much the jewelry popped against the lighter tan color. I stayed away from adding accent colors to the display because I like a minimal look, and I also wanted the gemstones in my jewelry to have a primary presence.
I think it’s also wise to limit the amount of different materials you use in your display. While different textures and materials can add visual interest and depth to your display, having too many can make your table appear disjointed. Instead of introducing many different materials, focus on using one (or two) materials in a range of different sizes and shapes. This will add visual interest to your jewelry display while maintaining a consistent palette. I find it helpful to keep in mind my color choices and my material choices, and make sure each individual display prop has one of these characteristics. I used a light colored, natural wood, which was the same color as some jewelry busts and earring stands I had recently purchased. Though the materials are different, the similarity in color helps keep things unified. What other tips have helped you develop your jewelry display?
Jewelry Display
Green Silver is a moving target but we are moving step by step to green our office. I recently presented our entire staff with designer commuter mugs to keep at work and use all day. I think we can save about 2,500 paper and plastic cups a year by using these cups when we head out for lunch or coffee. Plus, they are so pretty! We also hung individual towels in our bathrooms and kitchen. I think we will save about 30,000 paper towels a year using real towels. I know these are baby steps, but at least we are on the right track!
30,000 paper towels saved
We’re thrilled to introduce a new collection of Silver Pendants and links inspired by Rene Lalique. Rene Lalique was an Art Nouveau jewelry designer and glass artist from Paris who worked at the turn of the 20th century. His jewelry designs were pivotal in the shift away from precious gemstones and towards more realistic, natural forms based on close observation of nature. His work features plants, flowers, flowing lines and mysterious gemstones such as opal and turquoise.
A recent exhibit at the Legion of Honor showcased the works of Lalique, Tiffany and Faberge. Lalique’s jewelry is incredible: inspired designs, amazing workmanship, and so much emotion in each piece. Each item was a masterpiece, and yet around the corner would be an even more transcendent pendant or brooch, with poppies so exquisite they seem alive, carved horn birds about to fly out of the case, and miniature human figures literally climbing out of the jewelry. We left the exhibit stunned, saturated with beauty and totally enthralled with Rene Lalique.
These silver pendants and links are based on the roots of an ancient pine grove in one of Lalique’s fabulous pendants. Their knobby, gnarly forms will bring an organic, earthy feel to your creations. They will be available in mid-January.
Knobby twisted branch silver pendant and links will add an earthy feel to your jewely designs.
Winter Pines pendant by Rene Lalique
In the jewelry supply business and in the jewelry business in general inventory management is often the very key to success. Inventory management is also an aspect of the jewelry business that has a variety of challenges and is always fluctuating. As the inventory manager at Nina Designs, I would like to share my current approaches to inventory management that may help you or inspire a dialogue of further discussion on the topic. In October I discussed “New Items and Opening Orders”. This month, I will discuss “Reviewing Past Sales and Projecting Into The Future”.
Using past sales figures as a tool for re-ordering is an approach that will save you money, time and give you focus for the management of your inventory. You will save money by allocating your funds towards items that are selling well and ordering in volumes that will prevent you from being overstocked yet not running out of inventory. You will save time and gain focus through having a set routine for re-ordering as well as having fewer overstocked items to manage.
I review the sales for the past three months and use those averages to project into the future. If I notice that I am selling 30 pieces of an item per month on average then I need to decide how many months inventory I want on hand for that item. I usually allow for three months inventory on hand to allow for unexpected large orders from customers as well as turn around time from our vendors. My intention is to reduce the possibility of being overstocked while also doing my best to always have stock available to our customers.
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My last post on jewelry copyrights was very popular so I asked Dawn Newton, a lawyer at Fitzgerald, Abbott and Beardsley LLP to write up a few clarifying guidelines. I am printing her words below because they are clear and concise:
Unlike fashion designs, jewelry designs may be copyrighted under current law. (Those who are interested in the protectibility of fashion designs may wish to follow the status of the Design Piracy Prohibition Act which is currently pending before the United States Senate as Senate Bill 1957.) To qualify for copyright registration, they must only be an original work of expression, in fixed tangible form.
Artists often wonder what amount of originality is required in order to obtain a copyright registration. The answer is very little, provided that the inspiration for a design is not another copyrighted work. A jewelry designer may create a stylized impression of a flower, a bird, or a pinecone, inspired by those things in nature, and even if the resemblance is similar, as long as there is a small amount of artistic inspiration, it is sufficiently original to qualify for copyright registration.
But there is a significant difference between obtaining a copyright registration for your work and preventing anyone from creating their own work that bears any similarity. If your inspiration comes from nature, or anything in the public domain, other designers are also free to draw from those sources of inspiration, and it can be difficult to establish that a designer copied your design if that design is just a faithful replica of a natural phenomenon. The more unique your design in some aspect, the better the likelihood that you can distinguish your product from others and, if you choose to make a claim for copyright infringement, you have a better chance of succeeding. (more…)
The holiday season is in full swing in our office and silver charms, silver pendants, clasps and earring findings are flying off our shelves. As we pull orders, our minds wander as we note the combination of different silver charms, and try to imagine the beautiful pieces of jewelry that they will become. Will this Buddha charm and lotus blossom become a yoga-themed wrap bracelet similar to the one featured in BeadStyle Magazine by Ute Bernsen? Or will it become a nature inspired necklace with the lotus blossom as a focal point? We are all busy working as efficiently as possible to get your items out to you as quickly as we can! It’s very hectic here and things are selling out, so please get your orders in as soon as you can. I hope everyone is having a busy and profitable holiday season!
Nina adds another order to the queue of orders waiting to be invoiced!