From Concept to Completion: Making Jewellery

Ever wondered how jewellery designers come up with their ideas? What design factors are taken into account (and what commercial limitations there are in place)? Here I aim to give you an idea of my concept-to-product process. A sunny afternoon in late July is not really the setting one might expect a winter jewellery collection to be conceptualised in but that’s exactly what I was doing this summer. July is the perfect time for me. Summer is slow on the jewellery components and beads side and I like to stocktake over the summer to ensure everything is ready for the September rush on jewellery making customers. So I close my online shops in late July, take everything I want to use to make jewellery and then frantically make as much as possible for a month before stocktaking and re-opening my shops in September. This lets me get a wide range of items designed and made before my manic sales of the final four months of the year start. I was sitting outside one very clear morning in July and the clouds were like little fragmented puffs of ice. My ‘Winter Fantasy’ collection is based around those beautifully crisp, clear mornings in winter where the dawn lights up the entire sky in barely-there shades of pink, blue, lilac and lemon with dotted white clouds. Think the morning after snowfall when the sun is glinting off bright white snow and frozen icicles. The ‘Fantasy’ part comes from my love of the magical and whimsical. About half of my collection features unicorns, pegusi, fairies, stars, moons and the like. Moving from the concept to actual jewellery is a careful process. First I look at the colours and pick out appropriate shades in Swarovski crystal and occasionally, glass beads. I’ve used a lot of crystal AB, light sapphire, aquamarine, light rose, rosewater opal and violet opal among others. Then I look at my Sterling silver components. I sell components in various finishes of silver from very dark antiqued to the bright, almost white silver of very highly polished findings. It was the latter which were incorporated into this range. Next is design and make. It’s important to get a balance between artistry and retail savviness if you’re depending on sales for a living. I do make art pieces which take many, many hours, but when designing a retail collection there has to be a trade-off between time spent and rewards available (i.e. how much I can sell them for). So a lot of my retail collection are both beautifully simple and relatively quick to make which in turn allows me to keep prices at an affordable level. I tend to design 2 or three pieces, sort out the quantities I will need to make duplicates and then make up multiples of them. Again, this is a simple matter of economic sense, particularly as all my jewellery is sold through my eBay store. eBay implemented changes for business sellers earlier this year which make selling multiple quantities of the same item far more cost effective and likely to succeed than selling individual items. So most items are made with between 3 and 10 pieces of the same item. My jewellery ranges tend to centre around necklaces, bracelets and earrings and often I’ll make up matching ranges of necklace, bracelet and earring so a customer can buy a whole set if they wish. I make an average of 20 pieces a day for around 4 weeks. That’s over 500 pieces, all carefully hand crafted in my studio in South Gloucestershire, England. My jewellery is available online exclusively through my ebay store at www.stores.ebay.co.uk/princess-jewellery. I also sell a large range of beads and findings, many of which went into my current collection, both through my ebay store and through my website at www.princess-jewellery.net. Gallery Sterling silver necklace with Swarovski Crystal in shades of blue, green and teal. Sterling silver earrings with fairy drops and Swarovski crystal hanging from delicate rose-shaped post earrings. 9 Carat yellow gold earrings with 9ct glitter beads and aquamarine Swarovski crystal. Sterling silver charm bracelet with Swarovski Crystal beads, glass lampwork beads and a beautiful fairy charm.

Polymer Clay & Bipolar Babes

First off here's my weekend efforts with polymer clay. They are very amateurish but it was the first time I'd EVER worked with clay and I'm confident I will improve, it always takes a little time to get the feel of a new medium. I'm currently midway through making a lily focal which is noticably better than the first pieces

Selection of pendants, drops and connecters. My poor fairy has a scratch which I'll fix before covering her in resin for a nice glass-like finish:



Beads made with the clay 'leftovers'. Mainly I just wanted to see if I could manage regular, consistent spheres



In personal news, I was at the docs earlier partly to get more drugs, partly to see what my psych guy said about me after my January appointment. There wasn't anything particularly mind blowing there as we'd covered it all in the psych appointment. Being referred on to cognative therapy and psychotherapy, being kept under the mental health team's care as ongoing, no I don't want a change of drugs. Nothing surprising, nothing mindblowing - just yet more waiting around for referral appointments to happen. And they wonder why I periodically get sick of it all and self discharge from mental health care. Speaking of mad-as-a-hatterness I was reasonably gratified to learn that Jennifer Dangerfield of The Art of Curiousity is another bipolar babe. I don't know why I find that gratifying other than I admire her work, she's another Brit and unless I go out of my way to look (ie on dedicated forums) I rarely come across anyone 'openly' bipolar. Like being closet gays but with more stigma, and you can have a sex life even if you do hide it from the entire world *weird exasperation/irritation/amusement mix going on here*. I won't get on my mental healthcare soapbox or I'll never stop.

Geoff's off out tonight with Jan & Darren which is fine - only Finn & Jay here as its half term and Cam has gone to stay with the in-laws. Finn will be asleep within an hour if he's not already which leaves me free to get on with stuff that desperately needs doing. Mainly stuff directly relating to making money. Its a case of screw the Big Plan this week. Its a good plan. In fact its a GREAT plan. But it does involve long term slow and steady buildup of contacts, reputation and publishing which while will do wonders for business, doesn't help me pay the bills this month. So I'm having a focus-on-sales week. Newsletter to write, a squillion ebay listings to put on 10 day runs (I want about 1000 extra live for the end-of-the-month buying spree). eBay is a bit of an art form in itself. Sometimes having everything running quietly on 'background' shop listings is a good idea, sometimes going all out with the more expensive but more exposed 10 day auctions & Buy Now listings is better. After 5 years I'm still doing it largely by feel, and I currently feel that an extra thousand prominent listings is a Good Plan for the start of march.

Geoff saw a cat being hit by a car on his way back from collecting Finn. Just round the corner but it was gone when he walked back round to check (looks like the car that hit it stopped and hopefully took it to a vet). We've accounted for all our likely suspects but one so I'm keeping an eye out for Mini as Geoff thinks it was a tabby or a grey and Mini is tabby. Somehow I think I'm going to be reasonably agitated until I've found her. I'm trying not to think about it too much.

And finally, Darren was diagnosed as longsighted a week and a half ago, and got his glasses on Thursday. He looks... I dunno, older in them? Seems perfectly happy to have them though.

A kick up the bum!

I've spent most of the last few days (while conscious anyway, I have a cold and I have a tendancy to sleep ridiculous amounts when I'm sick) sitting being very aimless and thinking of all the things I should be doing and haven't, and mentally adding them to an as-yet unwritten list for some unspecified 'tomorrow'.

So I still haven't....

• Finished listing the beads on my desk to my eBay shop (get a move on woman, there are only 6 styles and some chain left to do)
• Tidied my office
• Put away all the new storage boxes into useful places where they can be used to STORE
• Put away all the stuff that I HAVE listed and that is now selling and isn't where its supposed to be when it comes to packing
• Done any art 'lessons' of any variety
• Made any jewellery.
• Not even managed the tinyest hint of writing a tutorial. Stupid thing is I know exactly which project I want to write up - I just haven't done it
• Done anything on my 'book'. OK its not actually a book, its writing for personal gratification and the satisfaction of curiousity for interested parties, but it still needs doing!
  
• Finished my jewellery website. All it needs is a few pictures and a link changing. Not rocket science.
• Read this months jewellery magazines. I have a Simply Beads, an Art Jewelry and a Bead & Button that I've done nothing more than quickly flick through.
  
• Gone through all the starred stuff in google reader and acted on those which require action

I could go on... but its getting silly.
Trouble is I rely HUGELY on Geoff to help keep me focused. I am not the most self disciplined of people. Not that HE disciplines me (well not at work anyway *grins* ...he can be rath... oh OK, TMI, I'll shut up... ) but he's pretty good at getting me to focus myself. I'm great with ideas, conceptualisation, innovation, ingenuity and occasional flashes of brilliance. I'm not so good at daily grafting and staying focused. Neither is Geoff of course, but he's pretty good at keeping me on track. And now he's back at work full time, I don't have that help here when I need it.

So focus, Stephie. Focus!

A bit of a bust...

I've been a bit useless today really. Not helped by feeling decidedly washed out post-friday night having gone out for drinks for our friend Andy's birthday. I'm getting too old to get trashed and sleep on floors.

But today... I've slept a lot for me, again I think because I'm slightly ill with a sore throat and sinus infection. I've not done much in the way of work due to a combination of illness/sleeping, the Evil Nieces being here till 4pm and then a (welcome) trip to Georgie's of madcowbeads. It was good to see her and good to get away from the kids. Then came back, had dinner, slept some more and have pretty much messed about on Facebook until now.

Tomorrow... I need to focus. I have a lot of stuff on my desk ready to list in my ebay shop and it needs to be done yesterday, then I need to send out my Monday product update email. I really need to do various things this week that have been sorely neglected as well. My design ideas gallery hasn't been updated in ages, I desperately need to start writing a jewellery tutorial a week, I also need to do the finishing touches to the jewellery website and start promoting it - its structurally there, more or less, but needs prettifying and personalising - and I have a whole bunch of jewellery that needs making to model some new findings I have in.

I'm dreading Tuesday's weigh-in. I ate soooo much rubbish over the weekend its unreal - I worked my way through a fried breakfast, then lunch, then chocolate, then a BK meal... etc... I rarely eat any of that stuff - or drink - and I dread to think how its affected my weight loss. Not well I suspect.

As for beautiul artistry-de-Stephie... gonna have to wait a few days I think, way too busy with work stuff. Georgie reckons our office is going to be completed soon (its being built) so I need to get in a position to pay the rent very quickly. I'm a little apprehensive about it. I desperately want my stock out the house, its got just too big to keep here but given funds, I'd go with filling in my swimming pool and putting a great big insulated shed in the garden. Sadly thats about 15-20k to be done properly which is way beyond our current means. But paying for space is going to be tight, I'm not making as much money as I should be at the minute, and I'm not looking forward to having to leave the house every day.

There's also the additional problem that, at the minute Geoff is working and we only have one car between us. And I can't get up there without a car. It also means that most days we're going to be back to me doing the packing on my own because we have Cam around once Geoff and the car are home and we can't really drag him up there every day. Plus I think G and I have different idea on how I'll be useing it. I see it as a storage and packing space, she sees it as joint premises complete with office-hours phone manning between us which really isn't practical for me - I can't have the computer up there because I can't live without it here and I don't want to leave the dogs and cats on their own all day. So its difficult. But it will be nice to not have the stock here.

Fickle as a flutterbye!

Me that is! I've been busy for the last couple of days creating a shiny new website to showcase and sell my jewellery and provide an artsy backgroundess to it all. Artsy backgroundess including a getting to know the artist bit - which this blog will be imported into (hence locking anything I really don't want visible to potential customers to LJ friends). Its coming along nicely, Ive got the structure almost done, the design is looking good and a load of products are written and in place. Its not online yet - I need my card processing details to be resent to me before I can add them to the site but its coming along nicely.

However 10 minutes ago my birthday pressies from georgie arrived :o) So I have a shiny new how-to-draw-fairies book and the Drawing for Dummies book here and a need to sit and work through the ENTIRE drawing for dummies book with pencil and sketchpad. So at least for a while I'm going to leave my website creation in order to play. I'll probably spend the day alternating both.

Its perked me up a little though. While I've been working fine its been in a very 'normal' manner. I read something about omega three being beneficial to bipolars so I've been eating a little peppered mackeral every day and it does seem to be working. I'm not falling asleep whilst doing monotonous work and I'm not being utterly manic about my new site (or my new books - its the weekend, I'm allowed to play!)

But on Monday I reach the grand old age of 32 and I'm not a huge fan of birthdays, possibly just because having a birthday a week before Christmas really sucks. Apart from Georgie's books I have two presents to open on Monday - I know Geoff had one arive in yesterday's mail plus Jan dropped on in last night which was a welcome and very sweet surprise from him. I wanted to open it then and I think he'd have liked me too but presents being in such short supply I thought I'd save it. There will undoubtedly be more but everyone is so frantically busy organising Christmas that I tend to get forgotton until they're dropping / mailing christmas stuff. Geoff is broke so I don't blame him in the slightest for not managing my birthday but *sighs* it would be nice to have some exciting new things to play with.

The other thing that has been stressing me out is work. eBay customers are SO impatient this close to Christmas - and of course mail can be severely delayed - which adds up to a whole lot of annoyance.

I might get some sleep before doing anything - I was up early with Finn this morning and had fairly horrific nightmares through most of last night (its the stress!) and while I did try going back to bed at 9am when Geoff woke up, it lasted all of an hour before arguing children disturbed me.

Getting there....

Back to workspace. I wasn't joking when I said the designated room was a tip. Here's a 'Before' picture...

The grey bar in the forefront is a crosstrainer by the way. One of those 'I really need to get fit' moments several years ago that's sat collecting dust ever since. And underneath the pile of boxes and rugs at the back is a sofabed. Honest.

But I'm getting there. All of the kids crap is now out (you can't see it but the desk and surrounding floor area were covered in stuff). My sister's other half is coming up to collect rugs, crosstrainer, and sofabed, plus a spare cooker and freezer from our old house that were unneeded after we moved! She can use them or sell em or whatever. My time is worth more than I can make from them, hers isn't. I'll post another pic when I've finished sorting it out.

There is so much equipment I want. I need an anvil, and some jewellery hammers. A milling machine (I think thats what its called - has steel type rollers - mainly because I want to be able to texture metal sheet with it). A propane torch and something heatproof to solder on. A Genie has become my cabbing machine of much desire. It will be mine! Various other 'little' bits. And longer term a kiln and glassworking equipment. Oh and a safe... I'm impulsive, not stupid :p. Unfortunately they'll have to wait... Mr VAT man is owed £1800 and I owe quite a bit to my Big Sis Friend Georgie of www.madcowbeads.com so I have that as my main priority. So project Be-A-Jeweller will have to wait a little while so I can sort out urgent payments (not helped by the fact that I'm owed about 6k from the sale of part of my business earlier this year).

Therefore this week will, I think, be dedicated to real work (doubly important because eBay have decided to add item specifics to the jewellery making category *sigh*. I haven't finished adding them to beads yet and now I have a zillion other templates to edit. The only good point is that at least they did it when its quiet!). Unfortunately its August, the sun seems to have finally come out for summer on this little grey island, and that means folks aren't spending anywhere near enough shopping online! I also have an absolute shedload of unlisted stock to get up on my ebay site - just taken a massive load of glass beads (with lots of shiny gold foil beads - beautiful, expensive and hard to get over here!) plus I have a fair few new findings and bails that I haven't sorted out yet, including a lovely new range of gold filled items. Unfortunately gold filled is still relatively unheard of in the UK so I'll have the task of educating my customers on the value - approx 100 x more gold than gold plated, 5% of total weight is real gold and doesn't cause allergies, flake, or tarnish. Wonderful stuff!

If I do get a few hours to play with, I do have one toy I'll be trying out - my lovely dremelly-type tool - which while not what I want to use long term for opal cabbing, can certainly be used to play with until I can afford something better. Although having looked at all the zillion bits for it, I'm not sure I have a fine enough grit to get a really good finish. I do have stickyback wet & dry sandpaper though, so I can probably modify some of the bits. And I have some rough and valueless low grade opal to play with before I let myself loose on the good stuff!

Ad finally, to balance out the not-very-attractive picture above, here's a pretty one - this is one of mine, made with gold filled findings and Swarovski crystal (I sell lots of Swarovski). I really wish I could master photographing necklaces. I kick ass at tiny things - crystal & findings are a doddle - but anything bigger than a couple of inches and my quality drops. On my list of things I need to learn!