I recently bought a Groupon voucher for a jewellery class at Claire Aristides Jewellery School – it was for a half-day beginners class, based in Covent Garden. I arrived bright and early as the class starts at 10.30am. There were around 30 other girls (and one dad!) in the room. The class was led by 4 instructors (which was a good thing, as there were a lot of people in the class!).
The class focused on making rosary loops to hold and attach beads, and the first project was a bracelet. The beads and tools are all provided by the school. There was some healthy competition between the girls to get the beads they wanted. After an hour or so of practising rosary loops, we were let loose on making the beads for our bracelets.
The school provides the bracelet chain (no need to make your own jump rings to make a bracelet today!). The instructor showed us how to open jump rings and attach the beads and a clasp onto the chains. After a break, the class started on making earrings. Since I don’t have pierced ears, I opted to make a second bracelet!
And here are my finished bracelets:
Conclusion
On reflection, I’m glad I went to this class. I practised a lot with the round-nose pliers, and using beads is an interesting way to add colours to my jewellery pieces.
My only down-side with the class is that it was massive, particularly, in comparison with the silver ring class I took with London Jewellery School. The class size makes it quite difficult to get time with the instructor to ask questions. It didn’t help that the instructor tended to stand on one side of the room to explain next steps. Jewellery really is very small when demoing… However, she did take time to come over and show smaller groups who couldn’t see the demonstrations first time round. There was also a plug for sales of jewellery toolkits during the class!
A good, fun class – not sure I would use these techniques often, but worth going to for some inspiration and to widen out the techniques I know about.
