Jewelry Stash Challenge Conclusion

At the beginning of 2016, I made a goal to wear every piece of jewelry in my stash of handmade pieces at least once. It was a tricky challenge for many reasons, such as the fact that I often get dressed in a rush and don’t have time to carefully pick a piece that matches my outfit, and most of the time I’m wearing a work uniform that covers up my jewelry anyway. Then there’s the occasional piece that doesn’t fit me or that just doesn’t work.

The Done Pile

At first it was fun and easy to come up with fun jewelry combinations and I was going through pieces very quickly. Once all of my favorites were out of the way, though, things got a lot harder. There were many days when I just didn’t bother putting on a necklace or a bracelet. There were days when I had to force myself to wear something just so that I could add it to the ‘done’ pile. This has been happening a lot over the last couple of weeks, which was a sure sign that it’s time to wrap up the challenge. The purpose of wearing every piece was to give them all a chance to make it into my regular fashion rotation. Anything that I have to wear grudgingly is just going to get ignored after the challenge anyway, so at this point I think I've achieved my goal of test-driving all of my jewelry and starting fresh.

2010 Jewelry Stash

One of the things I really looked forward to with this challenge is cultivating a selection of pieces that I want to wear all the time, and packing the rest away for possible frogging, or to use as a weird, beady time capsule. I wish that I had taken a ‘before’ picture of my jewelry stash at the beginning of the challenge. It would be great to compare how many pieces have remained, and how many have been omitted. Not to mention all of the pieces that have been added since I've been making and keeping tutorial projects since the start of the challenge. I do have a photo of my necklace stash from a few years ago that looks pretty much the way it did this January. There are lots of old favorites there, and a few pieces that I still haven't worn even once since making them sometime between 2006 and 2009.

Challenge-Depleted Necklace Stash

Today, my necklace stash was almost completely depleted. There are just a few outrageous statement pieces that I will probably never wear, a handful of slightly broken pieces, and one or two things that I just didn’t get around to wearing. I think I can safely say that I got close enough to wearing 'everything', and can call off the challenge so that I can get back to wearing my favorites again! I wish I could say that I learned a few things about my jewelry tastes and the changes in my beading repertoire, but I've been looking back on most of these designs from time to time, and there weren't many surprises there.

Favorites-Only Necklaces and Bangles

Once I had removed everything from my jewelry racks that I wanted to stow, I grabbed my pile of already worn jewelry and started adding the pieces that I want to keep out for everyday wear. There were a few pleasant reveals waiting in the box. Because I had blown through a bunch of newer pieces right at the beginning, there were a few things that I forgot I had. I’m looking forward to trying them out again. More than half of the new stash is pieces that I have been wearing faithfully for years, but it’s great to see the collection filled out with some of the designs that I’ve been making recently. It was rather refreshing to re-organize them by style, and I hope that I'll have an easier time grabbing necklaces and bracelets to layer in the mornings.

Bracelet Stash and Stowed Jewelry

Everything that remained after I'd chosen my pet designs is currently piled in an old jewelry box that is way too small for it all. I feel sort of bad for banishing everything that way, but I don’t have the time or the energy to deal with such a mountain of beadwork right now. After hanging on to some of those pieces for a lot of years and passing them over every day, it will be nice to have them out of sight and out of mind for a while. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to pass them on to a young dress-up artist.

Did you make any creative resolutions this year? How are they progressing?

Mortira

Subscribe * Facebook * Google+
Send your beading questions to InspirationalBeading@gmail.com
Support Inspirational Beading for bonus tutorials and more! Powered by Patreon

Copyright 2016 Inspirational Beading

Jewelry Resolution Update

We’re now about 10 weeks into 2016 and I’m pleased to report that most of my creative resolutions are still going. I’ve been chipping away at my goals to make more tutorials and frog old designs, though I’m still a bit behind on my commitment to stay organized and put away my beads on a regular basis. I have managed to keep my desk from getting completely out of control, but I haven’t yet done a 100% overhaul of my workspace. I’m sure I’ll find the time sooner or later.

Meanwhile, I’ve been sticking to my challenge of wearing every single piece of beaded jewelry in my stash. I haven’t been moving through them quite as quickly as before. Back in January I wasn’t wearing a uniform to work every day, so I had many more opportunities to layer on multiple designs. Lately I’ve been sticking to just one necklace or bracelet, with the occasional combination.

One of my favorite combos of late was an embroidered medallion which I paired with two cuff bracelets in similar palettes. I’ve nearly worked through all of my favorite pieces and I’m now finding it more difficult to choose designs that I want to wear. I want to say that I had more time to pick pieces to complement my outfits back in January, but I think it’s more likely that I just need more time to decide on which of the remaining pieces I actually want to wear.

My out-box of worn jewelry is starting to overflow now. I’ll be moving these pieces to a new container to wait until the challenge is complete and I can reorganize my wardrobe. On the plus side, this challenge has provided yet another opportunity to stress-test my designs. It's always nice to see how well they hold up when I treat them with the opposite of proper jewelry care - like stuffing them into a tiny shoe box at random.

How are your creative goals going so far? What’s been your biggest challenge this year?

Mortira

Subscribe * Facebook * Google+
Send your beading questions to InspirationalBeading@gmail.com
Support Inspirational Beading for bonus tutorials and more!

Copyright 2016 Inspirational Beading

Jewelry Resolution Update

When I made my New Year’s resolution to wear more jewelry, I didn’t really think much about my methods for achieving that goal – so long as I was putting on a piece or two every day, I’d be winning. As I started to look at mixing and matching pieces in new ways, I decided it would be a fun challenge to quarantine everything I’d worn and work my way through the entire stash a bracelet and necklace at a time. Not only would this give me a chance to wear some of my oft-forgotten designs, but I would have to make some interesting choices in how to mix pieces with each other, and my wardrobe.

So far things are going really well, and at this rate I’ll probably be through the stash in no time. It’s a bit difficult to set aside some of my favorite pieces – especially the ones that I already use to combine and bring together different designs. I can’t promise that I won’t cheat and pull out some essentials here and there when I need a dash of something or other.

The first combination that I wore was my new floral chevron bracelet and a fish leather pendant. Normally I don’t worry much about matching color in accessories, but I like the way the reds connect these two pieces together. I'm a little sad to be putting the pendant aside as it's one of my go-to pieces when I just want to throw something on and run out the door. It goes with basically everything and it's a really fun piece to wear.

Some days I kept it simple with just a cuff or a pendant. Other days I want to experiment. A few times I went with old stand-bys.

I really like to wear a big stack of bracelets whenever I’m in a fun mood, or when I’m wearing a top that doesn’t work with a necklace. I always start with 3 or 4 simple stretch bracelets and an ombre crochet chain wrap. Then I layer on some petite bangles, and maybe a leather cord bracelet. I’ve already used this combo twice, so I’m running low on options. Soon I’ll have to discover new combinations from the bottom of my bracelet box.

One of my favorite new combinations so far was a German glass scarab pendant with a super long St.Petersburg chain necklace. When doubled or trebled, the chain creates an awesome cascade look. With the scarab at the center it looks even better. Once again this combo has a few hints of similar hues, so it really comes together.

At some point I’ll have to transfer the ‘used’ jewelry to a new location, as my current out-box gets filled up. This will give me an opportunity to really reorganize my collection, so that’s a nice bonus.

Are you sticking to your creative resolutions? What’s your biggest success so far?

Mortira

Subscribe * Facebook * Google+
Send your beading questions to InspirationalBeading@gmail.com
Support Inspirational Beading for bonus tutorials and more!

Copyright 2016 Inspirational Beading