You know, sometimes I get so wrapped up in my own brain that I forget that others may not share my perspective or view things with my personal frame of reference. My Wrap and Thread necklace design is a fitting example of this. While doing my first shows the past couple months and getting to meet customers in person, I was really surprised by how many intrigued and perplexed looks I saw on people while they browsed my Wrap and Thread necklaces.
Frequent questions included, "so what is this?"... "how does this work?"... "where's the clasp?"... "how do I close the necklace?". It did help when I displayed photos of various necklaces worn several different ways along with a brief written description, but more often than not, I was asked to demonstrate how to create the different looks, like the styles below.
[For those of you reading this who are not familiar with my Wrap and Thread Necklace design, it's a long, open-ended strand of gems and chain interspersed with at least one link along the strand. There's no closing clasp so you wear it by wrapping it around or doubling it up, and threading the end through the link, which you place in front (like a lariat necklace). My original Wrap and Thread designs included one or two links, but have now evolved to include designs with up to 5 links, some with handmade toggle-like closures, as well as double-stranded styles. The more links there are in the necklace, the more styles you can create.]
I'm really happy that everyone spoke up because it was definitely a lot of fun getting to share with folks how this design came to be and showing them how super simple it really is to change up the looks! And if people didn't ask me, I wouldn't have had this realization. Even after my demo and explanation, some people joked that they would still need a written tutorial to remember how to wear it. It never really occurred to me to write a tutorial because it isn't a complicated design, and I thought having a few photos of the different ways to wear it would be explanatory enough. But after those shows, I had an epiphany. Wearing this necklace is intuitive to me, but that's because it's my brain child and I've been experimenting with it for years! Since the inception of this idea about 5 years ago, it's been in my mind and on paper in so many different iterations. And I've thought about it so much, have done so many revisions on the design, and have taken hundreds of photos of all my different Wrap and Thread necklaces that creating the various looks with one necklace is second nature for me. Obviously, this may not be the case for most people browsing my jewelry. Sorry for the momentary lapse of clarity, everyone. I'm happy to announce that I finally got a clue. :)
So for the next few installments on my blog, I'll highlight the different Wrap and Thread styles I've come up with so far, and maybe include with each post a tutorial on how to create several key looks. Do you think a tutorial would be helpful at all? I'd love to hear your opinions on this!
