DVD – Jewelry POC

Making Fork Jewelry: How To Make Amazingly Unique Fork Bracelets and Necklaces by art jeweler Maryanne Cherubino is one of those rare pieces of jewelry instruction that offers something truly unique and inspiring to jewelry making enthusiasts.

Unlike many video instructions available today, Making Fork Jewelry shows you something that you can absolutely get up and do as soon as you finish the video…regardless of whether you’ve made jewelry before or not. It’s just that simple, fast and well, doable.

This quick jewelry making instructional DVD takes roughly an hour to watch and that’s probably why you could make fork jewelry right after watching it. It’s that thorough and full proof.

The video of Making Fork Jewelry starts up with a run through of the simple tools you’ll need to complete a piece of fork jewelry. Ms. Cherubino also provides information on where to get those necessary tools and chats casually about how to use these tools along with some added commentary about why you use which tools for what and why. Nice touches throughout the video and helpful as well.

Ms. Cherubino deftly walks you through the entire process of making two fork bracelets and a neckpiece so if you miss anything early on in the process, she catches you up again. It’s easy to see that she cares that you learn all the details about making fork jewelry well and thoroughly.

As a metalsmith, I’d assumed that you’d need to anneal (heat) the forks which would soften the metal. So I was surprised to see that heating isn’t necessary. Maryann shows you exactly how she bends the forks with ease without the need for any heating in the process.

So what will you get with this DVD? You’ll start out getting the tools explanation I mentioned above. Next, you’ll see Maryanne make a complete fork bracelet from start to finish: hammering the fork, polishing it, bending the tines of the fork. Then she’s grinding off sharp edges, shaping the fork into a bracelet and adding the stone or piece of glass as your centerpiece. Then she’ll do it all over again making another bracelet. Then she’ll change the process a bit and show you how to make a necklace instead of a bracelet.

Another advantage to watching this video is that if you’re considering expanding your jewelry making skills into metalsmithing (fabricating your own jewelry from scratch) you’ll get a jump start here. You’ll learn some of the essentials of working with metal for jewelry making like grinding down sharp edges and polishing your pieces.

All of that’s to say that what you get with the DVD, Making Fork Jewelry: How To Make Amazingly Unique Fork Bracelets and Necklaces is a thorough and complete education on how to make fork jewelry (without annealing) and how to do it well. While there are other jewelry types like rings that can also be made from forks or spoons, it’s fairly easy to extrapolate making those as well from this video.

OK. I have to admit right up front that I teach jewelry making classes. So why would I say to you that jewelry making videos are a better option than taking classes?

I’ve learned this from my own experience with my students. Some of my students take my jewelry making classes just because they want to spend some time doing something interesting and enjoy the company of other ladies. They look at jewelry making as just a hobby, and that’s fine.

But my other students take their jewelry making a little more seriously. They want to make quality handmade jewelry for themselves, as gifts for friends and family, or even sell their jewelry for profit. If you are like these students then I recommend jewelry making videos as a more effective teaching tool, and also as a more cost effective option than jewelry making classes.

Why more effective as a teaching tool? It’s pretty simple really. When you learn a new jewelry pattern in class you probably will have forgotten much of it by the time you get home. That’s just how our brains work unfortunately. Even if you take home with you written diagrams showing the jewelry pattern of the piece you learned in class, many people, myself included, just can’t translate a 2-dimensional diagram into a 3-dimensional world.

This can be a very frustrating experience, as I have learned with many of my students. To help my students overcome this I created jewelry making videos showing step-by-step how to create the jewelry pieces we made in class.

What a difference this has made not only in improving the quality of the jewelry pieces my students make, but also in eliminating their frustration level of forgetting how to make the jewelry pieces once they get back home from class.

What a jewelry making video allows you to do is watch every move the teacher makes in close-up detail. But probably more importantly, with a video you can watch the lesson over and over and over again, anytime you want, in the comfort of your own home. It’s like being able to retake the class, for free, as many times as you like. This is especially important when you haven’t made the jewelry piece in a while and you need a refresher. No need to pay for another class!

And that gets to my second point, why videos are more cost effective than jewelry making classes. When you take a class, private or group, you have to pay for the instructor’s time. If you want to learn to make many different jewelry pieces, at $20/hr. for group lessons, and upwards of $40/hr. for private lessons, the cost can really start to add up. In addition, you are limited to learning whatever it is that the instructor wants to teach you.

With jewelry making videos, on the other hand, there is a vast and rapidly growing library of lessons available for viewing on the internet or on DVD. The cost for these lessons is very low, sometimes even free, and you get to own them forever. You never have to pay for them again.

If you are, or are thinking you might become, serious about your jewelry making, I recommend giving video lessons a shot.

Both the playback and the payback are hard to beat.

Tag: DVD

Product Review Of The Dvd Making Fork Jewelry

Why Jewelry Making Videos Beat Jewelry Making Classes Hands Down