Making Your Own Pearl Bead Jewelry!

Natural pearls are actually very rare, and extremely expensive. Oftentimes people try to label pearls for sale as natural, but if they are at a low cost, they were most likely cultured by humans. But why would you spend the money on "natural" pearl jewelry when you can use pearl beads - which can be even more beautiful than pearls found in nature, and far more affordable.

Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, all about the pearl: "Before the beginning of the 20th Century, pearl hunting was the most common way of harvesting pearls. Divers manually pulled oysters from ocean floors and river bottoms and checked them individually for pearls. Not all natural oysters produce pearls. In a haul of three tons, only three or four oysters will produce perfect pearls [citation needed].
However, almost all pearls used for jewelry are cultured by planting a core or nucleus into pearl oysters. The pearls are usually harvested after one year for Akoya, and 2-4 years for Tahitian and South Sea, and 2-7 years for freshwater. This mariculture process was first developed by Tatsuhei Mise and Tokichi Nishikawa in Japan. The nucleus is generally a polished bead made from freshwater mussel shell. Along with a small piece of mantle tissue from another mollusk..."

You can purchase pearls and pearl beads for jewelry making at WigJig in a variety of colors, sizes, and shapes!

For the easiest way to get started making your own pearl bead jewelry, you should consider purchasing a WigJig Wire and Bead Jewelry Making Kit. If you are unfamiliar with the tools needed for wire working, and unsure of all the supplies you'll use for finishing a jewelry project, these kits are definitely the way to go. WigJig offers 2,500+ free web pages of designs and instructions to make your own jewelry, so you'll never be left guessing.
They also make great gifts! You can easily and affordably make beautiful earrings like those shown above-right with WigJig's pearl bead jewelry making kits!

For those of you who make and sell jewelry, this is an excellent project where you can purchase the supplies to make these earrings for less than $5 and make a pair of earrings in less than a minute. Our opinion is that these earrings should sell well at prices less than $10. We believe that having a low priced item like these earrings can get shoppers to stop and view your merchandise and therefore will also help to sell your more expensive merchandise.