Modern jewelry has never been as diverse as it is in the present day. The advent of new materials, such as plastics, Precious Metal Clay (PMC) and different coloring techniques, has led to increased variety in styles. Other advances, such as the development of improved pearls and quality artificial gemstones such as moissanite (a synthetic diamond), has placed jewelry within the economic grasp of a much larger segment of the population. The "jewelry as art" movement, spearheaded by artisans such as Robert Lee Morris, has kept jewelry on the leading edge of artistic design. Influence from other cultural forms is also evident; one example of this is bling-bling style jewelry, popularized by hip-hop and rap artists in the early 21st century. With the world's designs more accessible to jewelers, designs have blended in aspects from many different cultures from many different periods in time.
The late 20th century saw the blending of European design with oriental techniques such as Mokume-gane. Tim McGreight, an eminent author and silversmith, cites the following as the primary innovations in the decades stadling the year 2000: "Mokume-gane, hydraulic die forming, anti-clastic raising, fold-forming, reactive metal anodizing, shell forms, PMC, photoetching.
Among early 21st century developments, several jewelers have experimented with ephemeral edible jewelry; including necklaces made of bread and silver rings encrusted with crystallized sugar.
Artisan Jewelry continues to grow as both a hobby and a profession. With more than 17 U.S. periodicals about beading alone, resources, accessibility and a low initial cost of entry continues to expand production of hand-made adornments. Popular because of its uniqueness, artisan jewelry can be found in just about any price range. Some fine examples of artisan jewellery can be seen at The Metropolitan Museum.
Creating Your Own Jewelry
Do you have a better way to accessorize yourself than with a nice piece of jewelry? The problem is that sometimes costume jewelry can also be extremely expensive. Nevertheless, you have another alternative to buying them you can make them. It is easy to learn how to create your own jewelry. And sometimes it is even better than buying them because you can make them to match your outfits and your personality. This way you are not only going to save money, you are also going to have fun.
Are you interested in making necklaces? The simplest way to do this is using beads. You will see that you can create a variety of beautiful necklaces just using some heavy string and a various beads of different colors. In the case you are going to cover the whole circumference with beads you may even substitute the heavy string by a dental floss. You should always bear in mind what you are going to wear the necklace with. This way you can compliment the color of the necklace with the color of the dress you are wearing. Once you know the colors, you should start thinking about the pattern, which can be achieved by alternating colors or shapes, or making all of the beads the same size and color.
The most important thing at the moment of making your necklace is to be creative. But you should not forget to keep the theme in mind when you start making it. When you go to buy beads you can buy the ones you always use plus some focal point beads that are bigger that the rest. These bigger beads can be used when you choose to employ wire instead of string for your necklace, just one or two beads for the whole piece are enough and the wire show through.
