Our Amazing Drexel Jewelry Workshop

While I’ve been revealing our most recent Bridal collection over the last month or so, there has been a lot more happening here at VeruDesigns. Today I get to share one of those things.

You might not be completely surprised to know, that after last year’s success hosting our first few Jewelry Workshops, we’ve gotten many more requests to host jewelry workshops this year.  But with this being a new idea for VeruDesigns, I carefully picked and accepted only a handful of these opportunities, which in turn have convinced me that our jewelry workshops need to be part of what we do!

Today, I’ll share with you one of my absolute favorite workshops of the year so far. I was honored to be asked  by Drexel University (one of the most prestigious Engineering universities in the US) to host a 3-hour jewelry workshop for a group of top engineering students, who had no experience with polymer clay.

This is how it went down 🙂

The Project:

I learned that I would host a workshop with around 30 students. Many of them were from other countries, and none of them had any experience with polymer clay. So the project needed to be something simple enough so that it could be finished in 3 or 4 hours, but also simple enough in terms of complexity, so that someone who had never even seen polymer clay could not only do it, but enjoy it.

The project I chose is a simple RING, with a beautiful psychedelic pattern that is created using the “mokume gane”  technique (which I myself don’t use very often), but is perfect for an absolute beginner.

Tools and Materials:

Part of what makes my beginner-level workshops unique, is that they include all the materials and tools our students will need. The polymer clay is “pre-worked/softened”, cut and “flattened” with the perfect thickness. Each student received 10 different colors of pre-worked polymer clay. The project itself only required 3 colors, but there is nothing more important than color and choice for this project. So 10 colors was just fair and perfect, I thought.

We also provided beautiful branded “goody” bags, that each student took home, with all the tools and remaining materials to make more jewelry on their own at home! Each student received 8 additional tools to complete their projects and as part of their goody-bag.

THE CLASS – STAGING:
Not every student will come out of a jewelry workshop wanting to make more jewelry or become a designer . . . BUT, it is absolutely possible to make sure that each student comes out feeling not only satisfied, but with a sense that they had a joyous time filled with creativity and imagination.  Therefore I had two goals for this workshop in particular: I wanted to provide not only a handful of great jewelry making techniques (and a beautiful finished piece), BUT an AMAZING EXPERIENCE, regardless of the outcome.

This is how I turned a simple “workshop” into a true experience:

Inspiration:

For someone who has never even seen polymer clay, it’s hard to ask them to imagine what is possible.

For this reason I made sure to stage the “demo” area of my desk with lots of inspiration and ideas of what is possible to make with polymer clay. Four of our amazing students were able to finish their rings early enough, so that I could show them my “flower-making” technique, which one of the students was able to apply on the spot.

Workspace Staging :

In my personal experience  I’m much more inspired to work and create beautiful things when I’m in a beautiful place, surrounded by beautiful tools, and things. Under this premise, each student’s workspace was staged beautifully with all their tools, materials and free-goodies, to get their inspiration started from the get-go!

Extra tools and Prizes:

Additionally we had 3 toaster oven for our 30 students, which eliminated any “waiting” time.

It has become now a “signature” part of our workshops to always give-away a free couture Necklace at the end of the workshop! Our winner would get a $300 necklace made exclusively for her!

THE CLASS : DEMO

I divided the class in groups of 5. Each group would get a close-up demo around my desk. The demo itself was divided in 3 stages. After each stage, our students would go back to their desk and attempt doing it themselves.

The DOING:

Once they went back to their desks is when the fun really began!

One-on-one:

It’s really important (in my experience) to let our students know that it is perfectly ok to ask for help anytime, no matter how easy or simple or redundant they think their question is.  When we learn something new, there are no wrong questions.

The results:

All our rings turned out soooo much more beautiful than I thought possible!  We finished our workshop literally on-time, and our students had to basically run to their next class, which didn’t give me enough time to take pictures of their finished rings. But I was able to take a picture of their “pre-sanded” rings, which gives you an idea of the amazing color patterns they came up with.

My sample ring turned out to be the most boring one 🙂

But the best part, was seeing how much FUN we all had. We let the music blast in the background, we did quite a bit of dancing, celebrating, laughing, LEARNING, jewelry making. And then of course, I was sooo humbled and excited when I received this testimonial from the Drexel Team afterwards 🙂

My verdict? I LOVED IT!

I didn’t think that the interaction with a creative group of women would be so enriching for all of us.  So… workshops have since then become officially a part of VeruDesigns SERVICES (you’ll see VERY SOON a “Services” Page in our website 🙂

Since Drexel, we’ve had several other workshops, each one slightly different but still very exciting. I even had a workshop for little girls! (I may share that workshop with you in a future blog!)

Influence our next workshop: 

If you are interested in helping shape our future workshops (in person or online), I’d love to learn what specifically you would be more interested in, given your location, experience, interests, etc. Click here to answer this very brief WORKSHOP SURVEY.

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