Jewelry-Making For Dummies, Thanks To Styled By Tori Spelling

One day, a box showed up at my doorstep.  I knew it was coming, but it still shocked me, because inside the box was a motherlode of jewelry-making supplies.

This box contained many many pieces of both the Glitz and the Glam collections of Styled By Tori Spelling, the mix and match jewelry now found in stores like Michael’s and Jo-Ann Fabrics (selections vary by store).  You see where I’m going with this?

Making jewelry is for crafty people.  People who can make decisions.  People who know how to accessorize.  I am terrible at accessorizing, so I simply wear the same jewelry every day, if I even wear jewelry at all.  Plus, I was permanently scarred when I heard the line that Coco Chanel famously said:  “When accessorizing, always take off the last thing you put on.”  Now I second guess every single accessory I place onto my body when I am dressing for an important occasion.

On top of all that baggage, I was additionally cowed because I agreed to participate in this campaign along with a bevy of DIY and craft bloggers whose posts glow and shine with pretty photo collages and demonstrations, including one that showed you how to make your own jewelry bustfor God’s sake.

Color me intimidated.

The one thing I can bring to the table here, I realized, is that I had a lot of events coming up, during which I was sure to be photographed, (if only as self-portraits on some occasions), and maybe even with more visible bloggers than myself.  So!  I gamely stuck a few things together, put them on, and left the house.  Here’s what that looked like.

How To Make Your Own Jewelry Even If You Don’t Know What You’re Doing

Styled by Tori Spelling’s process is actually quite easy.  The collections consist of the makings of necklaces, bracelets, and earrings, and a few creative crafters even made purse handles, belts, headbands, and cat collars out of the supplies too.  Since necklaces are the easiest to photograph, I stuck with those for the most part, although I did have fun with all of the options.

Recipe for a necklace:

Ingredients:  necklace top, necklace bottom, connectors, pendant (optional)

Assembly:  connect the necklace top to the necklace bottom with the connectors, then add the pendant to either side by sticking it right on one of the connectors.  You can add other necklace bottoms, and mix and match between style collections (there are four – Glitz, Glam, Boho, and Noir), and pendants in the middle or on the side.

The same idea goes for the bracelets and earrings, too. Because I had so many different combinations to work with, I was very nervous about choosing.  I am a person who took months to pick a paint color for my baby’s nursery.  I had a terrible time committing to necklace combinations!  So I started off simply with a pretty silver combo (shown above) for Kyle’s open house night at school:

That went well.

After that night, I organized the whole assortment by type, put it in a safe place, and basically dashed over to it and tried to pick and create a piece of jewelry every time I went out.

The best experience with the Styled By Tori Spelling collection came when my house was the gathering place for the Uncorked/California Wine Club tour I went onwith four other bloggers at the beginning of June.  All of these other women are style and fashion bloggers, and two of them even slept over after the tour, so when I welcomed them into my home, I already had all the components of the jewelry laid out on my kitchen table.  Each one of the ladies took one look and gasped.  “Jewelry!” they squealed, and immediately started playing around with the combinations.  It was kind of awesome.

In the morning, before the wine-tasting began:

We drove around the countryside, eating delicious food and tasting lovely wines all day long.  We arrived back at my house at 11:00 PM, and the girls got right back into it after changing into their PJ’s.  It got a little silly…

But after a good night’s sleep, and possibly some dreams that involved S-hooks and danglers, my style blogger friends came through:

Now that I have had the Styled By Tori Spelling jewelry whispering at me from the shelves all these weeks, I have become a little more adventurous about accessorizing.  I’ve never been one to wear chunky necklaces and I have always been averse to asymmetrical things in general.  For example, I could never pull off the one-sleeve look.  To me, that just means you are walking around with that missing feeling the whole time you are wearing an incomplete shirt or dress.  The whole pendant-on-the-side thing here is worrisome to me, but I wore the look anyway, determined to see if it would be accepted by the rest of the world.  To my delight, nobody stopped me on the street or the red carpet to say “Hey, you only have one pendant on that necklace.  What happened to the other one?”

Just last night I had dinner with a girlfriend who doesn’t care what I wear.  At all.  Still, I primped a little bit, as girls do for each other, and at the last minute I grabbed a necklace top and bottom and some connectors and threw together a new combination.  And even though it was the last thing I put on, I didn’t take it off, and my pal actually complimented my choice of adornment.

— Bonus:

I’ve been fussing with this jewelry project so often and for so long now that the kids have gotten into it too:

Note: The pieces in all four collections of Styled By Tori Spelling jewelry are all sold separately.  Some of the necklaces have so many moving parts that they get tangled up if you are not sitting perfectly still the entire time you are wearing them.  Also, the S-connectors are easier to work with than the traditional circular necklacey connector thingies which tend to get stuck and make an impatient person very frustrated.  But as more and more people buy and use them, these very important components of the line are sure to be improved by the manufacturer.  I do think that a selection of mix-and-match parts of this jewelry line would make a great gift collection for that stylish (or style-challenged) woman who would like the pride of making her own jewelry without as much of the decision-making or the hassle of things like supplies and tools.

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This post is sponsored by Darice (Styled By Tori Spelling parent company) and Blueprint Social, which means I received complimentary jewelry sets and I am being compensated for this post.  The opinions, the overwhelm, and the taking advantage of my stylish friends are all mine.

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And one more thing: There’s a thing down here where you can see all the crafty blog posts done by the crafty craft bloggers.  Their posts are very pretty.  You should look at them.