Getting Ready; Wine Bottles Revisited; Hammers and Anvils

Today's Silver Price: $31.96/t.oz.

Getting Ready!

I received a shipment  yesterday from Fire Mountain Gems- 18 different colors of 6mm round glass beads! I immediately started making bracelets and before I knew it four hours had gone by, lol. It was a very productive evening!

I have two events this weekend. One is a holiday craft/vendor fair at a local high school. I've done a fair there previously with not much success. However this time I will return with a much larger inventory and better displays. I think I am going to stick with hanging my earrings on the window screens. It's more attractive, and so what if it takes longer to present them to the customer? I don't think I'll be that swamped... but you never know!

On Sunday a friend of mine is holding a holiday boutique party at her home. She is having Avon, Tupperware, myself and some other vendors. Pretty sweet idea... maybe she will become a vendor fair promoter in the future.

I haven't worked on any paintings, I have focused my energy on jewelry alone. Trying to focus on that 20% effort which should lead to 80% revenue. I may over the next few days work on a few watercolors already in progress, but I don't think I'll be creating anything new.

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Wine Bottles Revisited

I tried breaking wine bottles again into pieces I could use for jewelry. I was able to break the bottles this time, I just had to use more force. I had an idea to use different colored pieces to create glass snowflake ornaments but I had trouble getting the pieces into the shapes I wanted. I broke the bottles inside of two plastic bags. Then I tried grinding the edges down with a Dremel grinding stone to change the shape, but that did not work very well. I then used a cutting wheel on the Dremel. I found that if I scored a line in the glass piece with the cutting wheel, I could then use a pliers to break off the excess. I seem to remember a video I saw once of a stained glass artisan doing exactly that... my brain must have stored those images deep in the library of my head.

The whole thing was  very slow and tedious and might be too ambitious of a project. I might just not have the right Dremel bits. I think next I'll see if I am able to drill holes through the glass pieces so that they could be used in jewelry.

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Hammers and Anvils

In the spring I'm hoping to purchase some hammers and anvils so I can be a rockstar like this guy. I also want to learn how to solder so I can create more complex pieces. And I want to get a kiln and try out metal clay (clay that when fired burns away to leave metal)... and I want to get a jewelry tumbler...  So much to do, so little time!

Stocking Up On Supplies

Today's Silver Price: $32.30/t/oz.

Yesterday's price of silver was $31.20. Perfect for buying!!! I went online to Rio Grande and I bought some sterling silver earwires, some sterling silver pear shaped components in two sizes and sterling silver jump rings. I also got some 10mm Murano glass beads. All of this is for making earrings. I've made these earrings before, they are long dangle earrings with one colored bead in the middle and they sold like HOTCAKES when I set up a table in my sister-in-law's teacher's lounge one day in 2010. Teachers love jewelry! It of course helped that it was a week before Mother's Day.

I also purchased some 16 gauge copper wire to make wrapped wire rings, and I bought a pound of copper stripping with which I hope to make cuff bracelets. I'll be giving the baseball bat a try for those.

From Fire Mountain Gems I ordered 18 different colors of 6mm glass beads. The beads come in 16" strands so I am going to have a whole lot of beads! I'm looking forward to making multicolored glass bead bracelets in both sterling silver and copper. I also bought some 10mm Greek evil eye beads- one package of 100 in traditional blue and white and another package of 100 which is multicolored. I have a friend that requested a bracelet with green evil eye beads so I thought I'd make a whole bunch, I think they would be popular. 

I spent a little over $200 on these orders combined. Hopefully it will be worth it! My supplies should be arriving early next week. Can't wait to get to work on it!

Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Today's Silver Price: $32.52/t.oz.

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I woke up this morning to an email informing me that someone had purchased an item on my Etsy page. Today was a good day! One sterling silver and amethyst beaded bracelet SOLD!

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Stores everywhere are preparing for Black Friday. People everywhere are preparing for Black Friday- making lists of stores they are going to hit, alphabetizing the items they will buy, taking out a third mortgage, raiding their 401Ks...  My first couple of jobs were in retail and the phrase Black Friday brings to mind chaos, bedlam, mayhem and hysteria. Black Friday is the Friday after Thanksgiving when an enormous amount of shopping occurs. It has been dubbed Black Friday because this is the day that will often take businesses out of the red (negative profits) and into the black (positive profits). Thus hoping to spur even more frenzied shopping, most stores have implemented massive sales on this particular day to draw customers in... and it works. There probably are some amazing deals out there on Black Friday, but I don't think I have ever been out shopping on this infamous day. I prefer to stay home in my pajamas and eat turkey sandwiches.

The Monday following Thanksgiving and Black Friday has become known as "Cyber Monday" because of the tremendous amount of online shopping that now takes place on this day. Why do people shop online so much on Cyber Monday? I have no idea. Maybe it's because they are starting to emerge from their turkey-induced coma and want to shop, but don't have the strength to leave the house? Maybe they are too embarrassed to go out to stores because they have wicked turkey farts?

After reading so much lately about Black Friday and Cyber Monday, I've been thinking that I may just put all of my jewelry on my Etsy page for these big shopping days. As I have mentioned previously I usually separate my stock between items listed on Etsy and items that I bring to craft shows. It is always a dilemma as to whether or not I post something on my site. Also that means a large portion of my jewelry stock would be sitting unseen in a box until my next show.

My plan for this weekend is to get every piece of jewelry that I can up on my Etsy page. Just throw it all up there and see what happens. As my aunt says, if you throw enough mud at the wall, some of it will stick. Guess what? This morning some of it stuck.

To List, Or Not To List, That Is The Question.... and Show & Tell

Today's Silver Price: $34.24/t.oz.

Ok, Twilight is on FX at 7:30 tonight so lets make this quick. LOL.

To List, Or Not To List?

One of my challenges in keeping an online shop and doing craft shows at the same time is which items to use in which arena. When I list an item on my Etsy site I don't like to take it to a show or fair because if I sell it, I would have to immediately take it off of the website which is not always possible. Today's smartphones do offer easy internet access, however my Crackberry has limited capabilities (I may have to upgrade- I need better technology!!!). So if I am taking particular items to a craft show I cannot post them on Etsy. I want to have a large selection on my website, but I feel that I have a greater chance of selling something when customers can pick up a piece of jewelry and try it on.

For every piece of jewelry that I make I must decide if I will post it on the website or use it for a show. I suppose if I were to have an inventory large enough there would be enough merchandise to fill both the website and my table at shows. I feel like for a craft show or fair I should bring every piece I have and sometimes I have even removed pieces from the website in advance of a show.


Show & Tell

Over the weekend I finally got to make my new rings out of the sterling silver patterned wire that I've been babbling about. This is the patterned wire. It comes in a coil- I believe I purchased two feet of it (not all of it is shown below). I cut it down to 3-inch pieces in order to make rings.

 I've grinded down the ends of each piece with a Dremel to a diagonal slant to match the pattern of the wire. After grinding with the Dremel I used a file to smooth the edge.

 The rings have been bent around a ring mandrel. The ends have to be bent using pliers, it's too hard to do with my fingers.

I've made several of the rings below using 16 gauge sterling silver wire. I made one for myself and I wear it all the time. I've also made these out of copper wire.

Below are some copper bracelets with glass beads that I've made this past weekend:

I still have to add the spiral charms to each one. The charms are made from copper wire.

Here's some sterling silver bracelets that I've made previously. The first two pictures were taken using my homemade light tent- you can see the difference in these from the third pic below which was taken only using the camera's flash.

 Amethyst Beads:

Black Onyx Beads:

Multi-colored Glass Beads:

That's all I've got for Show & Tell tonight!

Holiday Game Plan...?

Today's Silver Price: $33.79/t.oz.

Game Plan: None.

Am I supposed to have one?

During an online forum on Etsy I heard that for the holiday season you should plan for increased sales, therefore you must have increased inventory. The audience members were asking what the experts were doing to prepare for the holidays. The experts suggested simplifying your collection of merchandise- or editing down to the most popular items. Focus on creating items that are proven sellers. Hmmm, I guess this is no time for experimenting.

This makes me think of a presentation I watched on creating your own path to success. The presentation was entitled "Design Your Own Success." The speaker was Sharon Ann Lee who is a cultural trend analyst, writer and artist. The presentation is about 30 or 40 minutes and I highly recommend watching if you have the attention span especially if you are a small business owner. There's also some good life lessons in there. She explains the difference between when "your ass is broke," and when "money is coming out of your ass." Good stuff.

ANYWAY.... One way Lee says we can be more successful is to become more efficient in our work. Lee explains the 80/20 rule, or the Pareto principle. It goes like this: 20% of your work brings in 80% of your results (revenue), and therefore 80% of your work and effort only brings in 20% of your results. She states that you should cut out the 80% of your effort that is not producing maximum results, thus giving you more free time. Interesting theory, however I have yet to determine what 20% of my effort is most profitable.

If I were to compare painting to jewelry making, painting definitely takes more time and effort, and so far has been the least profitable. A painting may take 5 hours, 10 hours or more to complete. Usually a piece of jewelry takes 20-30 minutes to complete and maybe less. So perhaps I should focus solely on producing jewelry? Devote my time and money to creating as much jewelry as possible and put the painting projects to the side. I hate the sound of that. But it may be a sound business decision. Did I just figure out what the 80% to cut is???

And thus ensues the battle between heart and mind!

Consignment Shops and Baseball Bats

Today's Silver Price: $34.79/t.oz

Consignment Shops

People are always telling me that I should sell my jewelry in consignment shops. My immediate reaction is always 'Hell No!' Just this morning someone told me that a friend of theirs had opened a consignment shop in the area and I could contact her to sell my jewelry. Here's how it would work. I make an agreement with a shop owner in which they will sell my jewelry in their store, and they keep a percentage of the sale. I trust that the shop owner will take good care of my handmade merchandise and make some effort to sell it. Now I'm not sure of the details of these kinds of agreements such as what percentage of the sale they keep, I suppose that depends on the arrangement.

From what I have read consignment shops can be a very bad choice.

In his book Philip Kadubec describes how he and his wife made an agreement with a consignment shop to sell their handmade baskets. They set up the baskets in the shop's window display and left the store with high hopes. When they returned at a later date they found that their baskets had been moved- placed under a table and out of view. That's no way to sell a product! Once you leave your product in someone else's shop you have no control over how and where it is displayed.

One of my objections to consignment is that I try to keep my prices as low as possible in order to attract buyers, but at the same time make a decent profit. If I were to give a percentage of my sale to someone else it wouldn't be worth it. I would have to raise my prices.

Also, I have always been terrible at delegating responsibility. So how could I trust someone else (a stranger, by the way) to sell my product? They didn't make it, they have no love for it, and if it doesn't sell it's no loss for them. For now I will stay away from consignment arrangements because it just doesn't feel right for me. Maybe in the future I will revisit the idea but for now I will continue to respectfully decline the suggestion.

Baseball Bats

This past Friday I was sitting in my car on my lunch break thinking about cuff bracelets (this is how my mind works- I daydream about jewelry). I found this video last week in which the artist makes a cuff bracelet out of a strip of 16 gauge sterling silver. He simply bends and then hammers the silver around a mandrel and forms a bracelet. Rio Grande sells a great selection of plain and patterned wire that can easily be made into cuff bracelets using a bracelet mandrel. A bracelet mandrel is a cylindrical object (usually steel) around which metal can be bent or wrapped in order to form a bracelet. As I mentioned last week, I do not have a bracelet mandrel, and one would cost about $30 or $40 to purchase.

I thought about what other objects I could possibly find that are similar to a mandrel and could be used for shaping cuff bracelets. I remembered I have an aluminum baseball bat in the back of my Jeep (a girl can never be too careful) and realized it was quite similar to a mandrel. I pulled the bat out of the back and found it was a pretty good size for wrapping a bracelet around. Aaaaaand... makeshift mandrel? Check!

I'm psyched out of my mind about it! I think cuff bracelets will become a large part of my jewelry collection in the very near future.

Holiday Prep!

Today's Silver Price: $34.11/t.oz.

I've got one month to go before I do a craft fair and a holiday boutique party in one weekend (Dec 3 and 4)! I'm hoping that these two events will be my most successful yet! I'm also hoping that silver prices stay relatively low this month because I need to stock up on materials. The price of silver has been creeping up in the last couple of weeks. The patterned sterling silver wire that I bought recently worked out REALLY well, so I am hoping to purchase more of it. And.... it comes in copper!  I'm going big on rings this time around. I made a great ring out of the patterned wire but I gave it to my mother and forgot to take pics. I'll have to make another ASAP so I can post images. I also learned to use a Dremel to grind down rough edges on the wire. I'm on my way to being a real metalworker, haha!

The patterned wire also lends itself to making cuff bracelets, however it requires a bracelet mandrel- which I don't have! From what I've seen they cost about $30 to $40. I may just have to spring for one! The wire is bent or hammered around the mandrel to form a bracelet shape. Pretty simple process and could produce some very popular pieces (no alliteration intended).

I have a new necklace idea that I want to try. I saw it at a jewelry party- it's a 2-in-1 necklace. Basically it's a 32" necklace that can be doubled to become a 16" necklace. I think it would be pretty expensive to make in silver so it may have to be only in copper. Maybe I'll try out some silver-plated material, but that makes me nervous. I worry that the silver plating will chip or peel. Also I think any cuts made would not be clean. I guess I'll never know until I try it.

So I've been re-thinking my display as I seem to do before almost every show, lol. For my first show I displayed my earrings on homemade black earring cards. Then for a couple of events I used window screens to hang my earrings from. The window screens were great because they allowed light to pass through the earrings and a lot of my pieces have glass beads that reflect light. However when a pair of earrings was purchased it was a little tedious to take them off the screen and put them back on a card. I'm debating whether or not I should go back to the card display... which now that I think about it may pose a problem as I believe I threw out the display box I built... hmmmm. I might also need more boxes for ring display, since I plan on having a ton of rings available. If I have necklaces to display (which I haven't in the past) I will have to come up with some new display ideas. Better start planning for it now...

I'm very excited about these two events coming up and I am anxious to see what the public will think of my new items. There's lots of work to be done so I will be a busy bee for the next month! Time to get the production line (me) cranking!

Multitasking- How Much is Too Much?

Today's Silver Price: $32.80

This past Thursday night I was multitasking. I was watching a live online forum in which the topic was using social media to promote your small business, writing a blog post, posting on Facebook, posting on Twitter, and updating my website. Whoa!

I think at some point doing to many things at once not only becomes overwhelming, but can also be detrimental to your productivity. If you are doing five things at once, one or more is going to suffer because you are not giving the task your full attention. Multitasking can also lead to errors, mistakes or mixups. Details can be overlooked when your are not focused on one thing.

My life is one big multitasking tornado. Working a full time job, trying to develop a business, attempting to keep my home clean, fighting to stay healthy... and have I mentioned that I'm planning my wedding? Yeah. There's a lot going on. So I often have to make a choice as to what gets put on the back burner. Maybe I really need to post new pictures on my Etsy site... but you know what? I also have to get my Save the Date cards mailed out. It's a constant game of prioritization and re-prioritization. Luckily my full-time job does not spill over into after hours- once I leave the building at the end of the work day I don't have to think about it until the next morning. However working full-time only leaves me with four or five hours in the evening to get other things done. So I roll up my sleeves and get to multitasking!

Lately I've been wondering if this is a healthy way to exist, always doing several things at once. My brain is not used to juggling so much and I have become very forgetful. I have to stay organized otherwise it does become too overwhelming. Making 'To Do' lists seems to help keep me on track and remind me of things that need to be done. There are only so many things I can keep track of in my head before they start falling out of my ears. Lol. I often feel as if I am going against my own grain as I believe I am naturally a lazy person. Lazy people are not successful people! All this multitasking is making my schizophrenic. Lazy Sara wants to sit on the couch and watch movies. Business Sara wants to post ten more items on the website and then Tweet about them, post on Facebook about them and blog about them! I suppose if I were not working an office job during the day I would feel less bogged down and would be able to peruse these websites all day at my leisure...  but that's not happening any time soon!

It's hard to find a balance.