Beadaholic. Yes it is true, most of us at Nina Designs are hopeless bead addicts. For some, like Juanita, the condition is relatively new. She only started beading a few years ago when she came to work with us, but she has developed a fierce case nonetheless. Clara claims that she, “has been beading since birth.” When I asked Ana about it she blushed as only a red head can blush, then admitted to stealing beads from her kindergarten class. Her mother found the beads and forced her to confess to the principal, a trauma from which she has yet to recover.
Erin’s mother served up trips to the bead store as an annual Christmas treat. When Emily was 12, she moved up from beading to metal-smithing, both skills she still employs on a regular basis. Leah’s love for African beads was honed when she lived in Zimbabwe but her bead roots dig deep into childhood. Personally, I have always loved to bead. My favorite childhood memory from driving cross country was a stop in Sante Fe where I spent my meager life savings on “liquid silver” beads and turquoise. Are you a Beadaholic? How did it begin?
An Early Nina Designs Original!
Young Leah's first jewelry creations
Gold Plate Vermeil jewelry parts continue to grow as an overall percentage of our sales. It seems like every week we are sending off larger and larger boxes of silver to be plated. Last week it was a 20 lb box of silver! We love the look of the 24k satin finish and we have a number of styles that sell better in gold than in the original silver version.
Gold Plate Vermeil Style rejects that did not pass our Quality Control. We send rejects to a refinery for melting so we can at least retrieve the raw silver for re-use.
However, we also experience quite a bit of loss in the plating process. We quality control every gold plate item before we put it into office stock. Gold styles may be rejected because they physically break during plating; because the satin finish has a rough, almost sticky-looking surface; because the items have black “gunk” in the crevices that cannot be removed; or because the items have major pockmarks or scratches on the surface that are revealed after plating. Occasionally we’ll have a style, like S2460, a large puffy hammered heart, that looks fantastic in gold plate. Unfortunately, due to the item’s construction, it oozes a greenish blue liquid that dries into a crust after plating. After rejecting almost 90% of the stock sent for plating, we no longer plate S2460.