Amazing! Another one of those lariat necklaces I made has sold!
I can NOT believe this. The shop that took it on consignment found someone to buy the thing sometime in the last week or so. Actually, it was my favorite production and I figured when (“if” was not in my calculations) it came back to me, I would just keep it for myself.
At this point, every one of the pieces I’ve made has been purchased: several lariat necklaces and a cool lanyard for a state worker who has to carry her ID card every place she goes.
It just astonishes me that people would want to buy something I made. As much as I’ve wished I could find a way to make a living with some small craft, that I could actually create things people would covet never seemed…well, likely.
Unfortunately my friend who owns the gift and repurposing shop has decided to close. The site was not the best of all possible choices: in an old, quaint house on a main drag, practically invisible to passers-by (it took me three tries to find the place) and devoid of foot traffic. People come to the area for restaurants, but restaurant-goers are rarely there to shop for quirky, environmentally friendly gifts.
Right next door to my friend’s shop is another little shop in the same kind of antique house. Its proprietor carries some exceptionally pretty items, including some truly beautiful vintage jewelry, pretty china and gifts — a mix of old and new. She said she also may close, for the same reason — not enough traffic — but in her case, she’s doing quite well with online sales. Her Etsy shop has a steady trade, and she lives a long way from the brick-and-mortar shop’s gentrified central-city location. She’s open only on the weekends now.
I think I’ll go by there next Saturday and ask if she would tutor me in marketing from Etsy. Three of my other friends are making art (in one case, very nice art, indeed) and crafts. If several of us banded together to stock an Etsy shop, we might have a shot at making it work for us. The proprietor in question observed that the trick with Etsy is to make a lot of things available.
Heh. To do that, I’ll be reduced to making some more of these doodads.
Last night I started on a new one, which I think has some promise. The other day I saw a woman wearing a necklace that incorporated some rectangular mother-of-pearl beads, sort of like these…
…only thinner, more consistent in size and shape, and rather prettier in color. And lo! I realized I just happened to have a handful of those very things.
The half-finished piece, for which I still need to buy a lobster clasp, combines the mother-of-pearl with pearls, garnet, and pink rhodonite. It’s turning out kind of neat…so far, I like it.
I never know how these things are going to look until the beads are actually strung to form a coherent design. Sometimes once they’re on a wire I end up taking them apart and reordering the gems; sometimes the pieces look even better strung together than they do in the design stage.
This one is looking pretty good. The combination of the silvery-iridescent mother of pearl with the rose pink rhodonite, the deep wine-colored garnet, and the creamy white pearl is really very subtle and interesting. It doesn’t jump out and whap you in the face — it’s quietly classy.
IMHO.
At any rate, this one will not be a lariat. The mother-of-pearl rectangles are a little large to make for easy looping or tying, so I decided to make it into a more ordinary, latch-it-together necklace. It may actually be long enough to slide over one’s head, but if a woman has a hairstyle she doesn’t want to mess up, she probably will appreciate a clasp.
I may design it so she could wear it with the clasp either in front or in back. One of the several things I’ve learned about designing bead necklaces is that if you put something near the clasp that has some weight, it will keep the thing from scootching around — the weight will hold the clasp at the back of the wearer’s neck. If that weighted design element were pretty enough, she could choose to display it in front instead of having it hidden behind her. On the other hand, if she wore a collarless shirt or dress, the embellishment I have in mind would look highly decorative in back, too.
A wildly popular farmer’s market has taken up residence on the grounds of a nearby church — they hold forth on Saturdays through the fall, winter, and spring. If I could make about a dozen of these and then get one or two friends to throw in with me, I’m thinking we could rent a table there starting a week before Thanksgiving and keep it right up until Christmas. Betcha we could sell a bunch of loot then. And maybe we could also put our stuff together in a single Etsy shop. It’s a thought, anyway.
Helluva lot better than workin’…
😉