Selling your goods from a kiosk in a busy shopping area may not be your idea of a great sales opportunity. But as a shopper and lover of unique jewelry, I’ve found some pretty great pieces by perusing these little stands.
I live near Union Square in San Francisco, and while sometimes it’s kind of annoying to deal with people hawking their goods while you’re trying to shop/catch the bus/walk/go to work, sometimes I actually stop and find something.
One such time was when I got my now-beloved fork ring. There is a vendor in the Union Square area who makes jewelry out of forks and stones – at really reasonable prices. I think I paid $10 for each for the ring and a bracelet. He had some samples set out, and then a bunch of loose stones you could pick from if you wanted him to make it for you right there. I’d been in the market for a black ring, so I chose a black rectangular stone, had him measure my ring size, and watched him go to work on my new piece of jewelry.
He said he bought the forks on the cheap where ever he could find them. He cut off what he didn’t need from the end (handle) of the fork and filed it down, then bent to remainder around his ring-sizing tool. He bent the tines, and used them to hold to hold the stone on the front of the ring.
His ring-making enterprise struck me as creative, and also pretty cheap to undertake. Forks you could probably get for free. And the stones weren’t really that high-quality, but the ensemble put together was cute enough to be irresistible!