My “Creative Process”

Sometimes I have to shake my head at all the little steps that go into making and selling jewelry. I know I never thought of all that was involved when I first saw the beautiful pieces people make.

First I have to make the piece, which involves making sure I have all of the supplies I need.Right now I am mostly into wire wrapping so I have to make sure I have the right gauges, generally, anywhere from 18 gauge to 26 gauge for me, and then I have to have something to wrap.

Right now I have a small collection of gemstones because I keep hoarding them so I have plenty to choose from, although sometimes having too many is a bad thing because I sometimes get lost in the sea of choices.

Do I want to finally wrap my sparkly, purple druzy or do I want to go the safe way and choose something I have multiples of.

I also have to choose what metal I want to use. I mainly use copper but I do have brass, sterling silver, sterling silver filled, or rose gold filled wire to choose from in my stash.

Decisions, Decisions.

Ok so after I have my wire and my stone, I have to make sure I have the right tools whether I need my needle nose pliers, chain nose pliers, round nose pliers, bail making pliers and of course I need my cutters. If I am making a ring I need my ring mandrel.

Let’s say I have everything assembled, sitting on my desk now waiting for me to pick up some wire and make something but uh oh now I can't even think of what to make...sigh...

Usually in this situation I just start weaving and hopefully it turns into something or I get an idea of what to do later.

So minutes, hours, days later (depending on what I finally decided to make) I have a finished piece!!

Hallelujah, I'm done

!But wait, If I used copper I need to oxidize it( ok I don't neeeed to but I really want too) so I take my piece and mix up a batch of liver of sulphur ( ventilation helps) I plunk 

my piece into the mix and wait a few minutes... tick...tick...tick

Ok my piece is sufficiently dark enough. I take it out of the LOS and dry it off. After it is dry I take a nail buffer and polish all of the black stuff off, leaving a nice oxidized look. Then I use the other side of the nail block to make it super shiny.

Congratulations I have one finished piece in front of me, let’s hope it sells quick.

Wait nobody besides me knows it exists, time for the next step.

I have a Facebook page, Etsy account, twitter, Pinterest, etc. so I have the social media means to blast this piece all over the place but I need a decent picture so everyone can see what it looks like.

I recently bought a photo cube, so my pictures aren't so bad anymore. I still use my IPhone to actually take the pictures.

Anyway I set up the cube and start snapping some pictures. I could just throw them online as is but I like to adjust them a bit first.

First I use an app on my phone to adjust the lighting if needed and to add a border.

Unfortunately this program does not have a way for me to add my watermark so I upload all of my pictures to my computer and into another editing program to do any last minute edits and to add my logo.

After editing, I have a few nice pictures, showing different angles of the piece. Now I go to Etsy and I list my piece for sale. I try to come up with a descriptive and artsy title and listing. I calculate supplies and labor to come up with a fair price.

I also list my piece on my own website because eventually I hope to do the majority of my transactions through my own site instead of Etsy.

Ta Da! I now have a piece listed on Etsy, Etsy does a decent job of advertising my piece but I still like to show my piece on my sites too so I share my piece on twitter which then automatically shares it on Facebook. I also pin it on a couple boards on Pinterest.

This is an overview of how my process works and the steps I take to sell my jewelry.

Thanks for reading! :D