A Few Pieces for “Live” Sales

Online jewelry sales are a bit slow these days, so I’m trying something new: placing bracelets for sale in a bricks-and-mortar shop. And that meant building up a bit of inventory.

Normally, I keep one of nearly everything. By doing so, I can shorten my processing time because I only need to resize the jewelry for the buyer, rather than making something completely new. To place pieces in a shop, however, I needed to create a handful of pieces, in several sizes each.

Over the last week, I made seven completely new bracelets:

Selection of Jewelry for Shop Sales

Close-up images and details are below. From left to right, the individual pieces are as follows.

  • 1 x Turkish Round at 7.5″
  • 2 x Viperbasket at 7.0″ and 7.5″
  • 2 x Byzantine with Gold Lovers’ Knots at 7.0″ and 7.5″
  • 2 x JPL with Gold Accent at 7.0″ and 7.5″

Each piece takes around 3.5 to 5 hours to make, from making the rings to dropping the pieces into my tumbler for polishing. You can imagine how long it took to make the whole set!

I dropped off the pieces yesterday to Arts and Crafts, a consignment store at the local shopping mall that features a wide variety of handcrafted products. I signed the sales agreement, and had a good discussion with the owner about the jewelry styles, manufacturing process, and jewelry care and services.

When I browsed through the store previously, I noticed that most of the other items were at the lower end of pricing, somewhere in the $5 to $50 range, without any higher-priced jewelry selections. If (and that’s a big “if”) the pieces sell, the store will take 30% of the revenue.

I selected these pieces because they are at the lower price points, represent a variety of simple and sweet designs, and seemed like good test cases for selling at the store. If they sell, I may add a few of the more complex, higher-priced pieces. Maybe they will sell, maybe they won’t, but it seems worth trying for very little risk.

I’ll check in with the store in a few week and see if any pieces have sold. If so, I’ll replace them and (probably) add a new piece, as well.

Fingers Crossed!

Close Up and Details

Turkish Round
Sterling silver
7.5 inches
End rings welded

Viperbasket
Sterling silver
7.0 inches and 7.5 inches
Larger rings and end rings welded

Byzantine with Gold-fill Lovers’ Knots
Sterling silver and 14K gold fill
7.0 inches and 7.5 inches
End rings welded

JPL Chain with Gold Fill Byzantine Knot
Sterling silver and 14K gold fill
7.0 inches and 7.5 inches
End rings and rings around the center knot welded

Welding Chainmaille and Heirloom Pricing

I am so excited because I can now weld the rings I use to make jewelry. Welding will solve two problems at the same time

Problem One: Open Rings

Chainmaille jewelry can be very beautiful, but it has a problem. Rings can open when they are stressed, which means they may fall out and the jewelry will need repair. For most designs, this is not a problem except for the rings that hold the clasps. Those are the rings that get the most stress, caused from opening and closing the jewelry.

For example, I have worn my Full Persian bracelet nearly every day for years, and not once has any ring come loose…except at the clasp. I have had to re-close those rings twice. Not too bad considering the thousands of times I have worn the bracelet. Fortunately, it is a very simple fix. A couple of minutes with my needle-nose pliers, and the rings are once again fully closed. Of course, I am a jeweler so it’s not a problem. I made the jewelry and have the tools and expertise to repair it, but what about the person who buys jewelry from me?

For a few of the designs, such as the Viperscale bracelet, ring stress is a bigger problem. The rings are far larger and are, as a result, more susceptible to opening.

Fortunately, designs that feature small, tightly-fitted rings don’t open except under severe stress, such as when the jewelry is caught on something and yanked. For example, with the JPL weave or the Rondo a la Byzantine weaves, the rings are simply not going to open unless yanked hard. Continue reading “Welding Chainmaille and Heirloom Pricing”

2015 NM State Fair Blue Ribbon Bracelet

Entry in the NM State Fair Jewelry / Chain Maille Competition

In 2014, my girlfriend at the time and I visited the Creative Arts pavilion at the NM State Fair and checked out the bead work and jewelry competition. She is an amazing artist with bead weaving, as good as or better than anything we saw at the competition. I encouraged her to enter in the following year (this year, now).

And then I saw the chainmaille competition pieces. The blue ribbon winner was a pretty and sweet bracelet in the helm maille weave. It’s a nice design, but it’s definitely a beginner’s chain maille weave. I thought I would like to enter the competition, too.

Continue reading “2015 NM State Fair Blue Ribbon Bracelet”

Working with Jewelry Models

The problem: People can look at pictures of jewelry online but can’t try them on to see how they look and feel when worn.

The solution: Have pictures of the jewelry being worn.

There’s only one way to do that, and that is to take pictures of models wearing the jewelry. This means I needed

  • good camera,
  • tripod,
  • back drop curtain,
  • good lights,
  • basic (at least) skill with photo editing software, and
  • women to be the models.

I wanted several models, with several outfits each, to provide a variety of “looks” for wearing jewelry. My thinking is that women could look at sample images the various models, think “Oh, that style is most like me,” and then see all the jewelry on that model. I ended up with four different models, and I’ll probably shoot a couple more to complete this round of images. Once I have a handful of new jewelry designs, I plan to repeat the process.

Continue reading “Working with Jewelry Models”

Guide for Buying Chainmaille

Chainmaille jewelry comes in a wide variety of quality. Some chainmaille jewelry exhibits high-quality craftsmanship, fine materials, and professional  manufacturing techniques. Some chain jewelry shows sloppy work with little attention to detail and uses low-end materials. Most chainmaille jewelry is somewhere in between.

If you are interested in buying chainmaille jewelry, how do you know what you are looking at? What should you look for in chain jewelry to determine whether the piece is worth the price? Continue reading “Guide for Buying Chainmaille”