3 Ways to Save Money When Starting a Jewelry Design Business

Jewelry design is more than just a hobby for many jewelry enthusiasts, it’s a lifelong dream. Whether you’ve taken years of classes to earn your license as a master craftsperson or you’re about to start selling your own homemade designs online, starting your jewelry business will require an investment. However, there are ways where you can trim costs.

1. Hire a Refining Group

The best precious metal refiners have extended access to materials that they can then turn around and sell at a much more affordable rate than most suppliers. They gather the metal you need from shavings and used parts of things that seem to have nothing to do with jewelry making, such as aircraft. They then refine them into workable metal for jewelry makers. It’s much cheaper to get your supplies from them.

2. Gather Materials to Refine

Refiners also allow professionals to give them material from which they can refine metal. Save even more money when you provide the metal shavings or parts instead of relying on the supply they already have in stock. Talk to the experts about the best sources to find these parts and see if there are any junk yards or used parts places in your area.

3. Take Charge of Advertising Yourself

If you have the money, a good advertising firm can make a big difference to the launch of your business. However, if you’re operating on a limited budget, it makes sense to take charge of your own marketing. Create social media profiles for your business and engage the jewelry lovers online through relevant posts about the industry. 

Don’t be afraid to talk to other professionals in the jewelry business about how they saved money when starting their own lines. Input from your colleagues is especially crucial when you’re crafting on your own. So sign up for trade shows, conventions, and local artist fairs to start getting your name out there.

3 Unexpected Sources of Metal in Which You Can Invest for Your Jewelry Business

Crafting jewelry out of fine metals is more art than business, but you can’t successfully sell your art without a little business acumen. Besides marketing and shipping logistics, one of the most important things on your to-do list is to acquire quality materials at an affordable price. Hiring professionals to do metal refining is your best option — and you may be surprised to find quality metal in unexpected sources.

1. Aircraft Parts

The experts in palladium refining have been able to refine the metal from sources such as aircraft parts for use in jewelry making. See if there are any aircraft parts for sale in your area or salvage some at a junk yard. You don’t even need to purchase a complete working aircraft, as the parts alone are bound to be cheaper. If you don’t want to deal with the large purchase yourself, ask the experts to sell you what they’ve refined from their materials.

2. Circuit Boards

Computers are hardly the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about jewelry making, but the circuit boards in particular have metal parts that can be refined if you know what you’re doing. People are constantly upgrading their computers and have no use for their older models. There’s a surplus of computers headed to recycling centers, so see if you can get your hands on some of the parts.

3. Shavings

Professionals refine metal from old jewelry, coins, and even things like circuit boards and airplane parts. However, if you’re not carefully collecting the shavings that result from the refining process, you’re missing out on a source of metal that adds up fast. Rely on experts to use vacuuming and careful cleaning procedures to acquire all of the shavings that fall off during processing.

Speak to the experts about refining metal for your jewelry business. Whether you provide your own materials or purchase what the refiner has to offer, you’ll be satisfied with the quality of your investment.

Gold Assaying Basics

If you are buying, selling, or refining gold, you're going to want to be sure you're getting full value. One way to do this is by assaying, or in other words, evaluating, the gold. This is something often done by a precious metals refinery, like Jewelers Refining Group. The basic process has been around for hundreds of years but has evolved over time. The following are the main ways gold is assayed today:

1. Fire - This method is the oldest and most accurate, and also the most preferred. First, the gold is melted and a sample is taken and weighed. The sample is placed in a special crucible called a cupel. The cupel absorbs all non-precious metals and what remains is then hammered flat, rolled thin and heated in a porcelain crucible. A weak nitric acid solution is added, which removes any silver. The gold is rinsed with distilled water and dried. What remains is 99.999 percent pure gold. This sample is weighed. The weight of the original sample is divided by the weight of the pure sample and the result is the assay.
2. Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emissions Spectroscopy (ICP-OES) - Solid samples are dissolved, mixed with water and fed into plasma. The plasma will emit light on a particular wavelength indicating gold. The light is recorded and calibrated against specific standards. This provides a quantitative analysis.
3. X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) - This is similar to ICP-OES but can be done on samples that are solid, liquid, or powdered. The sample is irradiated with x-rays and the individual component wavelengths of the fluorescent emissions are measured by the spectrometer.

There are also methods you can use at home with ingredients you probably have on hand. For instance, to detect gold-filled items (gold plated vs. copper), simply etch a small scratch and apply nitric acid. The copper will react and bubble green. While these methods work, it's important to always get an assay performed by a professional, qualified company.

Integrating Old Stones into New Jewelry

Integrating old stones into new jewelry is a fantastic way to recycle out-of-date or broken pieces. Gems set in family-heirloom pieces can also be reset on their own or with a combination of new stones to create stunning pieces of considerable value. Safe stone removal is an essential part of this process, and jewelers interested in using old stones need to learn how to remove them from all types of settings.

Harvesting stones from traditional settings in gold and silver jewelry is usually a simple mechanical process, but removing stones from platinum and cluster settings can be tricky and may require chemical assistance. Removing extremely small stones can take a lot of time, so focusing on larger stones for removal and resetting is a good practice. Once the stones are out, the fun begins. From here, you can mix and match sizes, shapes and stones to create one-of-a-kind pieces.

Creating new jewelry out of old stones is a rewarding process that keeps good gemstones from gathering dust in an attic. Whether you buy older jewelry to recombine on your own or you have customers who want to give their older pieces new life, this process takes skill and a good eye for design. The first step is safe stone removal, so learn the basic manual skills required, purchase the proper tools and keep up with changes and advances in chemical processes.

Palladium Refining for You

Along with investing in stocks and mutual funds, you may prefer to build your portfolio by investing in metals. Metals prove to be a solid asset that can give you a lucrative return as long as you take certain steps to ensure your investment. Because the amount of money you can receive may depend on the quality of the metals, you would do well to consider partnering with a palladium refining company that knows from what objects metal can be gleaned and how this metal can be refined to the highest quality. These safeguards can help you achieve the highest return and also let you build a portfolio that will secure your future.

You may be like many other investors and assume that metals can only be refined from pieces of jewelry, coins, and other similar objects. However, as you learn more about this kind of investment, you will learn that other objects, such as aircraft parts and circuit boards, are also valuable sources for such metals. When you expand your knowledge, you can choose what companies to invest with and also use this information to grow your own portfolio. This information also can ensure that the metals in which you have invested have future use and can be made into objects like jewelry, watches, and other consumables that will have a high resale value.