Custom On a Budget
Everyone wants to buy something really unique and special for their significant other, unfortunately, sometimes true custom jewelry is out of their budget range. There are a few ways I think to help spread that cost out while still making the person you are buying for happy.
There are 5 major gift giving occasions that I can think of where jewelry is always appropriate–Birthday, Anniversary, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Mother’s/Father’s Day. I personally think that giving jewelry for every occasion is overkill. It gets expensive to do that, and the receiver starts to de-value what she/he is receiving. I truly think that jewelry should be a well thought out purchase that is both exciting to give and exciting to receive; if jewelry is your go to gift, that gets boring. That said, when you DO choose to give jewelry, I always recommend going custom. I don’t say that just because it is what I do, but because if you are custom making a piece, you are creating something that is special every time and those pieces will be valued more by the person getting the jewelry.
If you have a budget, like we all do, I still recommend trying to do custom if you can. The bottom line is that custom jewelry is not going to be in that $99.99 range. That’s a price point that can only be met by companies that mass produce their pieces over seas with cheap labor and cheaper materials. The least expensive way to have a custom piece made, is if it is manufactured with already existing “findings.” Finding are the small pieces like jump rings that can be bought and used as is. Using existing pieces cuts out the need for a wax which is the pricy part of what I do. This is not cheating by any means. Pieces put together with existing findings can be just as fun and unique as a piece cast from a new wax.
If you do want to make something custom and it can’t be put together using existing pieces, you will have to have a wax made. You can still break up the gift giving to spread the idea over multi holidays and therefor spread the cost over multiple holidays, sort of. This may not work for everyone, but, I think it could be fun to give the stones needed for a custom piece without having the piece made first. This could be fun in a couple ways–it is a completely unexpected gift (a bunch of loose stones? who’d guess that one?), if you already have an idea for them it could be fun trying to them sneak the stones away to make the jewelry for the next holiday, or it allows you to get the person received the jewelry involved in the design process to make a piece for your next gift giving occasion. I know I’m a gemstone nerd and would love to get gemstones for gifts even if they were never going to be made into anything, but I did try this idea on my mom. I gave her 3 sapphires and 3 garnets for Christmas since those are her two favorite stones, and then for Mother’s Day I made them into earrings for her. My mom’s and my taste are very different and while she would probably wear whatever I make for her, this allowed her to be involved in the design and now those earrings are her favorite ones! And she has a lot of earrings.
I am always up for helping people give the best gifts whether it’s jewelry or not, so if you have any other ideas I haven’t thought of, let me know!
Post a Comment