Monday 30 May 2011

PEARLS PEARLS PEARLS

Three hours later,  I was the happiest bunny imaginable.....hundreds of pearls in perfect condition.....all graduated.....from the tiniest little 2mm pearl to 5mm centre pearl or starting with a 4mm end pearl to a 8mm centre pearl.  Here are couple of photographs....I know ....no laughing please.....the colour variations are so subtle.... but here goes......







By this time I had also noticed that the individual packages/wrapped pearls were all labeled in Spanish.  At a geuss I thought that there was probably about 2000 strings of pearls including what I could salvage.


Then came the inevitable price question.  Pauline,  who is a supplier of all manner of beads to the jewellery trade, was not interested in supplying these pearls to her customers as the stock was limited and her customer base required vast quantities and ongoing supply.  This was in my favour and after some haggling we agreed a price.  


Agreeing a price was in my case definitely not the same as having access to the ready monies.  The next couple of days were spent exhausting all avenues of  credit after which I hotfooted it back to Birmingham to buy my pearls.

Took delivery and took my booty back home. 


Then the shock of what I had done hit home.....I had just spent a small fortune on buying pearls.  I did not know a thing about making necklaces.  Oh sure I had spent a considerable amount of time in the jewellery trade and yes I knew my stones but this was a different baby altogether.



For a few weeks I kept sidestepping the pearls in the hallway.....I did not want to look too closely because I had a sinking feeling that this may well be one of my most costly mistakes to date.  


The next move was too hide them as my son was due home for a weekend and I had no idea how I was going to explain what I intended doing with all these pearls.  All the pearls were put to the back of the cupboard under the stairs and that is where they stayed for the next four months.