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30 Quick and (Mostly) Inexpensive Tips for Jewelry Makers
1. If you're making gemstone jewelry, invest in sterling findings. You'll find that spending $50 on sterling silver online will get you a lot nicer materials than spending $10 each on base metal findings on five trips to the craft store. 2. Subscribe to newsletters such as those from Migem, Purebeads or Fire Mountain Gems and keep an eye out for sales. 3. If you possibly can, buy in bulk. Yes, you might be spending $100, but if you do it right you'll get $500 worth of stuff. You can also join bulk buying groups on Yahoo! groups so you don't have to buy a gross of crystal to get the best price. 4. Visit Bead-Patterns.com for free patterns, graphs and tutorials. 5. Head over to the About.com Jewelry Making Forums for real-world advice from master jewelry designers. 6. Tammy Powley, who moderates the boards at #5, also has a jewelry-making blog. Reading what other artists write is a wonderful way to pick up tips and experience. 7. If you've got the money, take fine art, metalworking or lampworking courses at your local university/art school/artisan school. 8. If you don't have the money for #7, or even if you do, check out the local craft and bead stores. Many of them (and most chain craft stores) offer basic lessons for reasonable prices. 9. Read trashy fashion mags, especially if you make jewelry that follows fads. See what the celebrities are wearing. 10. Buy cheap materials to practice with. You don't need sterling wire to learn how to wire wrap. 11. Check beading books out from the library. If you like to hold onto books to re-read and refer to, buy from places like Half.com. 12. Better yet, find a local beader to split book and magazine costs with. 13. Play around with other crafty interests. Learn to sew, or knit, or paint, or whatever. Why? See #14. 14. Try listening to classical music and let the music inspire a design. The concepts of space (silence), repetition (rhythm) and color (individual instruments) are universal. 15. Be wary of beading magazines with more advertising than content. Do you really want to pay $6 for a bunch of ads? Also, be wary of special issues on a certain subject. Check whether most of the projects are repeats before you buy it. 16. Be reasonably organized. No crafter is always neat and tidy, but being able to find the green wire, or the small needle, or the amethyst briolette is worth picking up once in a while. 17. Don't be pulled in by high-priced storage gizmos. Find something cheap that works for you and stick with it. I personally favor the flat $1.99 divided boxes from the craft store for seed beads and the multi-drawer small-part boxes for glass and semiprecious beads. Wire coils go into $1 round plastic storage tubs. 18. Don't skimp on tools. I have an absolutely wonderful pair of round-nose pliers I got at Walmart that show no signs of slowing down, but don't count on that happening. 19. Pack up a few projects into small plastic bags and grab one when you know you'll have some dead time at the doctor's office. 20. Buy a basic book like the Beader's Companion that contains most of the basic bead types, stitches, weaves and other information in one place. You can find it all on Google, but it's nice to have it to refer to at the beading table. 21. Wear every piece you make (barring earrings) for a few hours to make sure it's sturdy. 22. Keep your business name short, simple and easy to spell. 23. Buy your own domain name and some cheap hosting from Godaddy. Show your customers that you take your work seriously. 24. Never, ever use a free hosting service that puts ads on your website. It doesn't look professional and it distracts potential customers from your work. 25. Wear the jewelry you make. If you're complimented, tell the person a bit about your jewelry work and the piece you're wearing. Some jewelry makers sell pieces right off their wrist or neck. Have a business card ready to hand politely to anyone who asks about what you're wearing. 26. If you plan to do craft shows, you'll more than likely need a business license. Check your local city/county regulations as well as your state Department of Revenue. 27. If you're running a website to sell your jewelry, don't get over-detailed in the descriptions. Most customers want to know what's in a piece, but it's okay to say "Czech glass" instead of "three-cut charlotte beads with silver center and aurora borealis finish." 28. Swarovski says that they don't want anyone using their brand name in product descriptions unless they're an official Swarovski reseller. For example, by their rules you can't say you use Swarovski crystal in a piece. Most jewelry designers ignore this because it doesn't really seem fair to pay a premium for their crystal and not be able to say you used it, but there it is. 29. Take good photos of your pieces, especially if you're using them on a website. Would you buy from Amazon.com if all their product photos were dark and fuzzy? 30. Make it easy for people to contact you. If you're not comfortable giving out a phone number, post a visible email address on the front page of your site. Back to Articles and Tips |