At some point in your wire jewelry making hobby you start to realize that you are good enough to “sell this stuff!”  And then the next step is you’re going to have to take it seriously to make a go of it while being very careful to not lose the joy wire jewelry making brings to your life!

This article is to help you make the leap, albeit small in comparison to many other “startup” businesses that require capital, an office or store, and probably other people.  This business is more of a shift of focus from what you love to create to “packaging and marketing” what you love to create.  And on top of this you will need to account for the expenses of doing so and for the income derived from your wire jewelry making activities.  Beyond that, it’s pretty much the same as you’ve been doing before.  You may decide to make more pieces faster, streamlining your processes but still, it’s pretty much a replication of what your hobby required of you to design, create, and share with your audience.

You will still have to buy wire jewelry making supplies.  You will still need inspiration.  You’ll also still need to do the work itself and then make sure someone is going to wear it.  So, given that these are natural to you as a hobbyist, let’s focus on the new things that will be required of you.

Packaging and marketing are often scary elements of “going into business.”  Yes, it can be intimidating but the best way to learn how to do it is to look at your competition.  See what they are doing that you like and what they are doing that you don’t like.  Decide how you want to sell your pieces.  Do you want to sell online, at events as a vendor, or through retail stores / boutiques?  Do research to determine the requirements of doing each and figure out what fits your style the best.

You may need to hire someone to create packaging for you, designing also your logo, business cards, and product information as well as publishing a website for you.  You may exchange help from a friend or family member for some jewelry pieces.  After you have created your packaging for marketing, you’ll need to market yourself and your jewelry.

Discover what your competition does to “get out there” and design your own plan.  Ask for help from others and learn about low cost methods to get found (if you are going to sell direct).  Hire a marketing consultant for a few hours to get advice.  If you are selling wholesale you will need to learn how to find distributors of wire jewelry but in this case you may have to produce more pieces than you are willing to do.  But again, this is up to you about how you want to proceed with your business, in your own way that fits your personality.  Some people like to go out big; others take it one step at a time.  Do what works for you.

Finally, the accounting piece is very important.  When you begin, start with accounting software or hire a bookkeeper on an hourly basis.  Meet with your bookkeeper prior to starting your business so that you set everything up right from the beginning and know exactly what kind of paper trail he/she is going to want from you.  Get advice about establishing your business properly with required license(s).  Being organized will save you time, money and stress.

So, all in all, starting a business rooted in a hobby is not hard to do as long as you are open to asking questions and getting help.  There is SO MUCH free help out there if you just do a little research.  Take your time in your startup and most importantly, retain the joy of wire jewelry making throughout the process!

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Tagged with:hobbies, how to price jewelry, how to sell jewelry, jewelry making, Jewelry Making Supplies, jewelry marketing, making jewelry, wire-sculpture.com

Filed under: Design & Inspiration • How To... • Selling Your Wire Jewelry • Wire Jewelry Tools & Supplies

Daily Wire Jewelry Making Tip
September 18, 2009

Question:

I noticed that you offer 21 gauge wire and 22 gauge wire.  Is there that much of a difference and could they be interchanged?

Answer:

In my opinion, the gauge chosen from these two, (21 and 22), depends a lot of what other items are being incorporated and into what type of design the artist is making. For example, when using round wire, 21g is about perfect for making ear wires, while 22g is just ‘that much’ too thin to keep its shape with constant wear. Sometimes the size of the holes in certain beads determines the chosen size of the wire used. When making a Classic Cabochon Ring, 21g makes the piece more suitable for a man, while 22g is looks great on most women. (And yes, often I mix the two gauges.)

Answer contributed by Dale “Cougar” Armstrong

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Tagged with:21 gauge wire, 22 gauge wire, jewelry wire, wire, wire gauge, wire temper

Filed under: Daily Wire Jewelry Tips • Technique Tips • Wire & Wire Wrapping

We at Wire-Sculpture really care about the craft of wire jewelry making and those of you who work at it as a profession as well as those of you who just make jewelry for the love of it.  We aren’t just a store or a jewelry supplies company; we are so much more.  So, this post is to let you know all the ways we show that we care so that you know the path to our doorway is always open to you whenever you need anything.

First of all, we go out of our way to take care of you with extraordinary customer care.  We actually have wire jewelry making experts on our staff so that any question you have can be answered in a timely manner.  We also know in detail, the specifics of the supplies we sell.  And, we know all about the tools and even create original instructional materials and patterns.  And we publish our number so you can call us – 877-636-0608.

We also guarantee your satisfaction no matter what.  We are wire jewelry artists ourselves and we understand what works and what doesn’t.  We also offer a wide range of wire jewelry supplies and help you determine the best ones for you.  And, if for some reason you buy something and it doesn’t meet your expectation you are invited to return it and have up to 30 days to do so.  We want you to be satisfied with those of us that help you be successful in your business or hobby.

We also strongly believe in community, in sharing ideas, and in learning from others.  That is why we offer blogs, a tip of the day, a newsletter, and an open phone line when you need something.  No question is too small or insignificant to us.  If we can help you learn faster, then you will enjoy the art of wire jewelry making even more!

Last but not least, we want to hear from you to tell us how we can help you.  We make our best guess at what questions might be “out there” but it would help us immensely if you would give us some insider information about what questions you have about wire jewelry making.  When we hear from you we will come up with a way to meet your needs as quickly and as efficiently as we can.

That number again is:  877-636-0608.  Please also feel free to respond to this blog with any comments – we want to hear from you!

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Tagged with:how to make jewelry, Jewelry Design and Patterns, jewelry ideas, Jewelry Making Supplies, jewelry wire, making jewelry, wire jewelry, wire-sculpture.com

Filed under: Announcements & Promotions • Design & Inspiration • Wire Jewelry Tools & Supplies

Wow – can you believe that it’s been a whole year since we purchased Wire-Sculpture.com from Preston Reuther? This past year has been a year full of excitement, a little apprehension, a whole lot of work – and more than anything – a lot of joy for all of us here at Wire-Sculpture.com.

This year we’re having a huge birthday celebration (and the best part is – WE are the ones giving the gifts!) Be sure to keep reading to find out about our birthday gift to you!

As we look back on the events of the past year, we’re really amazed that we’ve come so far in such a short time.

When we first were introduced to Preston Reuther and started working directly with him, we knew that he had a great business model. We loved the idea of being able to get involved in the lives of others and help them to achieve some of their most cherished dreams and ambitions. Being able to see lives changed and see the joy that jewelry making brings into the lives of our customers has truly been an amazing thing for all of us here at Wire-Sculpture.

We knew that getting into Wire-Sculpture.com was something we wanted to do, but we also realized that it was going to be A LOT of work! And boy, we weren’t wrong about that at all – in fact, the more things we did, the more things we found that needed to be changed. It seemed like a never ending snowball of enhancements and changes needing to be made to the website, products and overall business model.

The first thing we set out to do was to create a more user-friendly website for our customers. We teamed up with Claim the Web and over the course of several months they designed a beautiful website for us. Everything was going great, until one day….

….the site just wasn’t fast enough. We had thousands of people on the site everyday and it was causing the site to run really slow. So, we took a jump and switched over to a much faster server. And it has been extremely nice! Not only do the pages load faster while you’re looking at products, we’ve been adding tons of new videos and because of the speed of the new server, they load up as fast as ever!

Along with the new site, we announced the launch of our brand new Affiliate Program, which has been a huge success. Hundreds of others have joined the affiliate program and started to promote our products through their blogs and websites, all the while creating a nice little side income for doing what they love!

Getting the new site online was kind of a bitter-sweet thing for Wire-Sculpture.com. We were very happy with the new design  and layout, however, because it was so much simpler to navigate through the site, we started to get lots of complaints about out-of-stock items.

So, off we were again, on a new adventure. Trying to bring literally millions of pieces of inventory into stock (much of which had been out-of-stock for months or even years). Little by little we  started to bring in these products and also many new and exciting jewelry supplies that weren’t available beforehand. Now, we’re not saying we did a perfect job with this, we still have a lot of inventory needing to be ordered, but it is a night and day comparison from where we were when we started one year ago!

One of the biggest obstacles we saw coming into the jewelry making business was that there needed to be a lot better communication with our customers moving forward. We wanted to create an environment where friendships and relationships could flourish and where as a jewelry maker, you felt like you had the one place where you could turn to for support, answers to questions, and motivation to continue with your jewelry making dreams.

Over the past year we’ve focused heavily on ensuring that this type of environment existed at Wire-Sculpture.com. We started our blog, signed up for a Twitter account, started a Facebook profile (we just recently had over 2,000 friends!) and joined many other social networking sites that allowed us to create these friendships with you. It has been absolutely fantastic to correspond with all of you and to see the excitement in your voices as you create your beautiful pieces of unique wire jewelry!

During this same time, we started offering a multitude of additional online resources to assist you with your jewelry making. The most successful of which has been our free jewelry pattern emails.  With the help of jewelry artists around the world we’ve been able to bring you new and unique jewelry pieces every two weeks – and they are amazing pieces of jewelry! We also continued with the Tip of the Day emails and recently we added a Video Tip of the Week to go along with the Tip emails. The videos started off a bit rocky as we’re not videographers by trade, but we’ve been improving each week and have offered some amazing short tutorials on various jewelry making techniques.

We created promotional emails with new promotions every few weeks, blog posts about the differences between wire gauges and tempers, and much much more!

All of these changes and additions were overwhelming and exciting, but nothing like the announcement we made at the beginning of June! Around June we as a company made a fundamental change in our business structure. We made a decision to get back to the real roots of wire jewelry and focus solely on that and nothing else. Along with this announcement we announced several exciting changes that we would be making to Wire-Sculpture.com, including: changing our category layout to be easier to shop with, dramatically dropping prices on many of our best-selling items to help ease the pain during the tough economic times, a new line of one-of-a-kind designer cabochons, and the addition of new jewelry artists that would become part of the Wire-Sculpture staff.

Dale “Cougar” Armstrong got on board with us around this same time period and things got crazy! Dale is an amazing woman and has the energy of a 10,000 volt power line. She had us running as fast as we could to offer better tips, bring more jewelry artists on board, have our first webinar and many other exciting changes (some of which will be announced soon!)

With Dale’s help we created our first “Wired Retreat” that is being held this October, where Dale “Cougar” Armstrong will personally train other jewelry artists how to exponentially increase their wire jewelry skills and teach them how to create beautiful pieces of wire jewelry.

We just barely announced the winners our 2009 Druzy Contest and wow – that was an incredible contest! We had many amazing entries included in the contest! It was definitely a tough decision to decide who the winners would be for the contest. We even held a popular vote contest for the second prize winner of the contest. This was the first time this had been done on Wire-Sculpture.com and it was a huge success! Within a few short days there were nearly 10,000 unique votes for the many Druzy Entries. It was a close race, but in the end there were 3 winners for the druzy contest.

Along with the announcement of our 2009 Druzy Contest  – we opened up several new categories in our Cabochon section. This was one of the toughest jobs we had for the year! All of the Druzy Cabochons and one-of-a-kind cabochons are completely unique, so we had to take pictures of EVERY SINGLE cabochon before posting them online. Talk about late nights – we didn’t sleep for two straight weeks as we took over 1,000 images for our new cabochons. But if you have ever seen some of these cabochons you would know that it was completely worth it. They are the most beautiful gemstones that you’ll ever see  – and they have been used to create some absolutely astonishing pieces of jewelry.

As part of our birthday celebration, today we just brought in nearly 100 designer one-of-a-kind cabochons and over 200 new Druzy Cabochons. Now that we have them online – you’re in for a real treat! Be the first to view the NEW Cabochons here.

And last but not least was our recent announcement of our Jewelry Template Websites. We’ve had a very fruitful relationship with Claim the Web and we thought we would pass along our good experience to each of you for your custom websites. Claim the Web created some beautiful templates that many of you have been able to take advantage of as you expand your wire jewelry businesses.

So, as we look back on this past year, there have been many wonderful experiences as well as some that weren’t so pleasant. But all-in-all this year has been an amazing adventure for all of us at Wire-Sculpture.com.

Above all – we want to thank you – our customer! You have been tremendous during this past year. You put up with us when we messed up and there were kinks in our programs and emails. You’ve given us very valuable feedback that has allowed us to expand our website and help bring you exactly what you’ve been looking forward to. Keep your valuable feedback coming!

So, thank you! We hope that we’ve lived up to your expectations throughout this past year and we’re excited for the upcoming year. We accomplished a lot this past year – but all of that is nothing compared to what is coming during the next several months!

Join us for our grand Birthday Celebration! We’ve decided to give gifts rather than receiving them this year – so here is our gift to you:

Spend $100 on anything in our store and receive a FREE $50 Gift Certificate available anytime and for anything on our website! This offer is available to EVERYONE purchasing $100 worth of materials from the site during the next 3 days.

All you have to do is place your order and within a day or two you’ll receive an email with your $50 gift certificate. You can use your gift certificate anytime you choose to and for any items on our site! That’s right – no strings attached!

We’ll be throwing the grand birthday party for three days, so be sure to take advantage of this gift sometime between now and Sunday September 20, 2009.

Happy Birthday Wire-Sculpture.com!

Brandon Hutchins
Wire-Sculpture.com

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Tagged with:birthday, birthday present, gift certificate, new druzy cabochons, wire-sculpture, wire-sculpture.com

Filed under: Announcements & Promotions

September 15, 2009—Salt Lake City, UT.  Wire-Sculpture.com has announced the winner of their 2009 “Inspired Druzy” Jewelry Contest by naming Ms. Rhonda Chase, with her piece entitled “Crystal Cave,” the Grand Prize Winner.   As the Grand Prize winner Ms. Chase will receive a “Wired Retreat,” a convention held in Buffalo, NY, in October.

The value of this prize is $1797  and will feature instructor Dale “Cougar” Armstrong, an expert in the art of wire jewelry making.  She has several projects planned as well as some fun surprises for all participants!

Ms. Chase also receives free accommodation at the retreat, being hosted at the Buffalo Hilton Garden Inn, as well as meals.  The Grand Prize did not include transportation to and from Buffalo.

The essay submitted by Ms. Chase is poetic and is included herein along with a photograph to demonstrate what it takes to create a winning masterpiece when making wire jewelry.

“Plink. Plink. Plink.
A drip.
A faint glimmer.

The moonlike gleam of a stray ray of sunlight. Walk into the dark. Quiet. The world is gone. A new world awaits.

Turn on a light. And see. Like you’ve never seen before.

Enter the cave. Resplendent walls of crystal with fabulous spires and drops. A spectacular shining cavern and a silent secret river sliding past the stone. At the center of it all, a magnificent still pool, saying nothing, but drawing great attention by its beauty. Crystal formations lie just beneath the waters’ surface, shimmering with uncanny light in this dim world. On the banks of the pool, banded layers of gemstone laid down over eons. “

A crystal cave was the inspiration for my Druzy artwork. These fabulous caverns present a world within our own, mystical in appearance, but completely earthbound. The very core of the earth itself–rock. My beautiful Druzy looks like a still blue pool at the base of the cave. Look into the pool, and see the sparkle of crystals beneath the water, the reflection of gems above. Look around the pool and see a liquid silver river winding slowly past it and through the cavern. The Druzy appears to float in its setting so that it is not obscured from light or view.  I have enhanced my crystal cave with Botswana agate and Swarovski crystals carefully chosen to match and accentuate the Druzy. You can see the river break into swirls and eddies as it splashes into these formations. And as the water comes around the far side of the crystal pool, five free-hanging rivulets of fine sterling chain and hand-wrapped links create small, gentle streams. After this, the river will continue on, the cave will continue on, but we can see no further.”

Beyond the Grand Prize, a Public voting and the favorite pick by Wire-Sculpture.com staff prizes went to Stephanie Eddy for her “one Man’s Pond Scum” pendant and Marie Parker for her “Life’s Hope” piece, respectively.   Ms. Eddy won a $100 Gift Certificate from Wire-Sculpture and an autographed copy of Dale Armstrong’s new “Wire Working” book with personalized comments about her entry.  Ms. Parker also received the same for her wire jewelry entry.

The contest required that each contestant create an original piece of wire jewelry using at least one Druzy Gemstone  Cabochon, submit a photo and write an essay about the piece describing where the inspiration came from to create it.  Each entry was judged for its originality (30 points), for its creativity (30 points), and for the artist’s ability to tie in their inspiration for naming the piece and their essay with the created wire jewelry piece (40 points).  There were over 50 entries in the contest.

The term “Druzy” (also spelled as Drusy or Druse) refers to the tiny crystal which is formed within or on another stone in a large number. When the ground water that carries dissolved, silica is through force pushed into the porous area of rock, rapid cooling occurs and it causes the formation of minute crystals.

Wire-Sculpture.com offers wire jewelry making supplies, ideas, and education to hobbyists and professional jewelry-makers and as a result provide the jewelry-making community with a platform to run competitions.  These contests are not only fun but help jewelry makers find inspiration, learn new techniques, and build a community of artists that love to create jewelry pieces.

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Tagged with:artistic, Dale Cougar Armstrong, druzy, druzy cabochon, gold jewelry making wire, how to create jewelry, Jewelry Design and Patterns, Jewelry Making Supplies, jewelry wire, wire jewelry

Filed under: Contest News