This is volume two of our tips and tricks series — quick, practical things we've picked up at the bench over the years. These come from Michelle, and if you've ever watched her build a cluster pendant, you know she doesn't waste a single move.
Building Tapered Gem Clusters
When Michelle makes tapered clusters on a pendant or earring using briolettes or faceted gems, she always works from the bottom up. The thinnest part goes at the bottom, and she builds toward the top where the cluster is fullest. It gives the piece that organic, cascading shape — like a tiny grapevine.
For earrings, a cluster about 1.5 inches long hits the sweet spot. Long enough to have presence, short enough to stay comfortable. Her favorite chain for cluster work is the #126 flat baby cable in sterling silver.
Chain Tricks
If you're cutting soldered chain, cut right on the solder seam. That cut link can loop back onto itself and become a usable link instead of scrap. Even better — when you can, choose unsoldered chain in the first place. Then every link you remove is still a link you can use.
Wire Wrapping: Don't Commit Too Early
This one sounds obvious, but it saves so much frustration: don't wire wrap your loops shut until you're happy with your layout. Lay everything out, move things around, make sure the proportions and flow are right. Then wrap. Cutting off wire wraps because you changed your mind is tedious and wastes wire.
Stretchy Cord Secrets
Two tips that'll change your stretchy cord game:
Hide the knot. Find the bead with the largest hole in your design and plan to hide your knot inside it. That means you either start or end your stringing with that bead — whichever keeps your workflow smooth. Nobody wants to see a knot peeking out between beads.
Cut clean. Use the sharpest scissors or cutters you own when trimming stretchy cord. A clean cut prevents fraying, and fraying weakens the cord right where you need it strongest — at the knot. We love the Tim Holtz scissors for this. They cut cord like butter.
When the Knot Won't Fit
If your bead hole is too small to hide the knot, grab a motorized bead reamer and widen it. Takes a minute or two per bead. The key is choosing the right bead to ream — pick the softest stone in your design.
Skip the metals, skip Herkimer quartz, skip anything in the corundum family. Go for pearls, turquoise, or softer stones. If you're not sure, check the Mohs hardness — anything under 6 is reasonable to ream by hand.
The Mohs scale runs 1 to 10. Talc is a 1, diamond is a 10. For reference: pearls sit around 2.5 to 4, turquoise is about 5 to 6, and quartz is a 7. Once you get above 7, you're fighting the stone more than shaping it. A quick search for your stone's Mohs rating before you start reaming saves a lot of frustration and broken drill bits.
Got questions about any of these? Come in and ask — Michelle and the rest of the team are always happy to show you at the bench.