Featured Seller- WillowBranchJewelry

As the followers of my blog are well aware, I make handmade jewelry and almost always, I support the handmade artists of EtsyNJ. I don't look at very much handmade jewelry (and don't even consider looking at the mass-produced "stuff") but every once in awhile, I'll buy something that has really caught my eye. This particular time, I stepped outside the Garden State for my purchase.

I love pendants. I guess you can say I'm a sucker for a pretty pendant. I love the creativity that many of the handmade artists display in their creations and when it comes to jewelry, the pendant has no creative boundaries.

My featured artist of the day is Brandi, from WillowBranchJewelry. Like many Etsians, Brandi dabbled in creating pendants several years before trying her hand as an Etsy seller. Brandi made pendants for family and friends and like many of us, was told "you should sell them."

Although the thought intrigued Brandi, she had no idea how she could possibly juggle a full time job and find the time to create... until one of her friends who loves her pendants, turned her onto Etsy. She loved the idea of a site dedicated to buying and selling handmade items and Brandi was quickly hooked. In August of 2008, Brandi opened her WillowBranchJewelry store. Four months & 20+ sales later she's building a name for herself and has already branched out into 2 brick and mortar stores in the California area.

At Willow Branch you will find an array of unique and exciting individual pendant necklaces. Each piece, which is handmade, encapsulates a contemporary design in the permanence of resin.
Brandi enjoys finding and creating new design images that are fun and different. Brandi's dragonfly creations are new. They had been requested by her Aunt, who like myself, loves dragonflies. Brandi has noticed a trend with dragonfly creations on Etsy and believes they may be the next "hot" item, much like the owl has been for the last year or two.

While chatting with Brandi, it was refreshing to hear that being a perfectionist. She's ruined nearly as many pendants as she's created. Brandi went on to say, "it's normal for resin to have minuscule bubbles and rare to have it clear as glass. Most people don't notice or care about the imperfections they may have. It comes with the territory of being homemade, I guess! I try to make something as perfect as I can."

Brandi's off to a pretty good start and is about to open a new shop. Her pendants are wonderful... bold colors of beautiful images... I'm certainly looking forward to receiving the pendant I purchased.

To find Brandi's shop, go to- www.Willowbranchjewelry.etsy.com
You won't be sorry... but leave a couple of the dragonfly pendants for me : )


'til next time...
R

Sea Glass Weekend, Craft Shows, Rebuilding the Shop

Whew, it was a very busy weekend. After my Friday night with my hubby (dinner and Xmas gifts shopping) I spent my Saturday making new bracelets and adding some inexpensive earrings to my show inventory. I had been leery of doing this, as my Sunday show was my last of the holiday season and I was unsure if the investing the time and components was worth it.

My craft show theory remains that I should have some inexpensive items on my tables. These are great when a potential customer walks up with a young girl in tow. There's nothing like when a little girl gets to choose whatever earrings she wants from my $5 displays... Mom/Aunt/Grandma/Dad is usually very happy, because the little one is thrilled to be able to shop and it doesn't hurt the customer's wallet. From my point of view, everyone is happy and 5-10 of these type of sales and I've basically covered most of my show fees, plus the customer still has money to buy some "big-girl toys" such as sea glass jewelry.

With the impending law of compliance for items intended for children 12 and younger, my $5 earrings will probably be a thing of the past next year when I do craft shows...this will indeed impact my bottom-line because more than 60% of the $5 earrings I sell, are purchased by women for their own personal use.

However, my time was certainly not wasted creating items for the show. The day turned out to be beautiful and the crowds were quite literally overwhelming! The show was held in Smithville Park in Eastampton, NJ (Mt Holly) and I don't think they expected such a turnout for their first ever Holiday show.

The crowds in Crafters Village (which was a heated tent that held approx 14 crafters) were 2 and 3 deep at my table and I know many people tried to get to the tent but didn't want to wait in the lines. The people that did get to me, were very receptive of my sea glass jewelry and I sold several of my nicest pieces, along with almost every Czech glass bracelet I brought to the show. My hair-ties and zipper pulls were almost totally wiped out and I sold several of my $5 earrings throughout the day.

When I was finally able to catch my breath, nearly 3 hours had passed. My hubby and I were basically trapped behind the table by the amount of visitors at the show. I laid out 75-100 business cards, when they were gone, I replenished the holders and they too were gone by shows end. I easily handed out or placed with purchases, 250 cards at this show!

Nearly 50% of my Etsy shop sold at the show. My hubby activated the remaining items...all 13 of them... relisted one, did a little promoting for me. When I woke up this morning, I found a note saying that 3 more Etsy items sold during the night... to a friend of a recent customer who had passed on my shop link : )

I'm now down to a lowly 10 items...yikes, I've never been this low & just before the holidays... and I spent my lunch hour taking pictures of a few new items in the park. Hopefully they came out okay and I'll be able to add a few new items during the week, starting tonight.

My big opportunity for sea glass hunting was basically a bust this weekend... well my hubby's opportunity for hunting, I wasn't going out on that freezing beach. The tides listed on the internet (a site that my hubby has had great success using in the past) was way wrong. Low tide was at approx 2am, and the 2nd low tide moved through at about 2pm...hubby's info said closer to 3:15 and by the time he arrived the opportunity was lost. He did find a very large piece of cobalt blue sea glass, not jewelry quality, but it'll look great in my sun-catcher by the window. He also found several pieces of brown, most of which he left behind for either the tide to reclaim or another lucky hunter. He said he was the only soul on the beach both in the morning and afternoon and it was very cold and windy. He's claiming to try again at the end of the week when the morning low tide gets closer to 7 -8 am...and there's always the last full moon of the year to try again : )

No new items to list... I'm off to download my pictures and start doing my new item write-ups!

'til next time...

R

Sea Glass, Sea Glass, Craft Show and more Sea Glass!

I listed my first creation using Gray sea glass yesterday. Gray is considered to be one of the extremely rare colors (they turn up approx once in every 2,000 pieces found) and this piece is flawless. I used the gray gem to to create a wire-wrapped necklace. I'm very excited about the creation and I'm very interested to see the reaction by sea glass enthusiasts at this weekend's show... if it lasts that long. The piece can be found in my Etsy shop and should appear in my Etsy mini located to the right --------->

Speaking of sea glass... this coming weekend is probably one of the best sea glass hunting opportunities of the year. The tides will be extremely severe with tomorrow night's New Moon and this new moon finds both the sun and moon closer to the earth than normal (the sun is normally closer to our planet during December and January) The new moon is called the Perigean Spring Tides and both high and low tides will be severe over the next few days. Despite the weather, my hubby will be out on the beach, on the hunt for some more pieces to add to my collection.

The last spring tides new moon, delivered a couple of jewelry quality pieces and several beauties that are now in bottles and jars that we use for sun-catchers. Maybe that elusive piece of yellow or orange will present itself this weekend!!

My final holiday show of the season is this Sunday...

From noon -6 pm , I'll be at the Holiday Village at Smithville Park in Easthampton, NJ

This is a great family event with so many activities, there's just too much to list. My hubby and the boys are coming with me and I'll be in the Crafters Village (area #4 inside tent #1) I'll have a few brand new sea glass creations for the show.

Just a brief disclaimer for anyone going out this weekend searching for sea glass. Even though it's a prime hunting opportunity, I do worry about my hubby going on the hunt solo. Despite having a great respect for the sea, I know he'll probably be alone on the beach (as the weather will be cold, windy and rainy)

The ocean and winter weather on the beach are unforgiving. The beach is often deserted, as the lifeguards have abandoned their chairs and headed home for the winter. Be aware of the conditions, dress warm... with many layers and when you are near the surf... never, ever turn your back on the sea.

The ocean likes to reclaim some of the treasures that it has previously left behind, don't let it add you to her collection. Good hunting!

The picture above is a sea glass creation that will be listed on Etsy later tonight.

'til next time...

R

CPSIA = National Bankruptcy Day for the Handmade Industry

It started over a decade ago... major corporations looking to make more money on their product, without having to raise prices. These companies believed it was best to send manufacture their products overseas. For awhile, it didn't seem like a bad idea.

Yes, there was a large amount of Americans that were downsized or lost their jobs altogether. But the economy seemed to be prosperous, and if people are making money with their financial investments, then the job losses are considered a necessary evil, or collateral damage.

Then, our children's toys were found to contain alarming percentages of dangerous, toxic chemicals, like lead. It wasn't just one or two products and the incident's were not isolated. A couple of years ago this seemed like an epidemic and just last year, toy companies were reeling from poor sales because of the the scandal.

Of course the government felt they needed to do something to prevent this from happening again, so they composed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. An act that forces all companies, from manufacturers, suppliers, distributors and retailers to all comply with a rigorous testing procedure.

The one problem, and a rather common occurrence when the government decides to attempt to correct a problem, is the how stringent the law is for everyone in not only the toy industry, but for every industry that creates children's products. Of course, this trickles down to the home-based handmade industry.

Makers of children's toys, clothing, furniture...everything for children under the age of 12 years old will be affected.

Starting on February 10th, 2009, anyone selling items that can be used by children 12 years old or younger must be compliant with this law or face stiff fines of $100,000 per offense. The way the law is currently written doesn't allow for a blanket compliance for each individual component.
If you manufacture parts for toy cars, use must have every single component in compliance. The part distributors that sell them to the manufacturers, must also send all the parts out for compliance, and then the manufacturer must take the finished product for testing...even though all the components have already been tested and compliance papers issued! Once the manufacturer has their compliance papers intact, they can then begin to send the toys into the stores. From my interpretation of this crazed law, it appears that the store must now take the toy for testing, as they too will need to be compliant... yes, it's bordering on insane.

As the government is always apt to do, they left themselves quite a bit of leeway with this act. They are allowing themselves to decide that a product could possibly be used by a 12 yo child (or younger) so products that a handmade crafter feels is safe, may not be (and the same goes for small and mid-sized business owners) So even though a handmade jeweler may make expensive necklaces or bracelets, the Consumer Product Safety Commission could decide that the $100 necklace they sell, could be bought for a 12yo (or younger) and without compliance papers, stating that the components that have probably been tested at least once, if not many more times already, your finished item will not be in compliance...because they say so.

To this blogger, this act favors the big corporations. They are having a pretty successful holiday season and are flush with funds to pay for these expensive tests (oh yea, tests will run approx $1,500 or more per item) and they'll probably have the ability to write off these expenses or at the very least, pass the expenses on to the consumer.

For the small home-based handmade crafter/artist, the small businesses and even many of the mid-sized businesses, it will likely mean a "mass-going-out-of-business" for all of them. In this blogger's opinion, it means that the big corporations that are mainly responsible for this mess, will be the only companies left standing when the smoke clears.... their competition essentially eliminated.

The more I consider all of the options several members of the handmade community have, the more this Act begins to smell bad. Handmade crafters out of business, small business closed, almost every mid-size business will probably be forced to shut their doors... all for good.
Of course the big corporations already have lobbyists hard at work, throwing millions of dollars around so that they aren't quite as affected...but that's for a future blog.

With barely 2 months to become compliant (and that probably isn't possible before 2/10/09) we as a community need to act as a whole. Write your Congressmen and women, contact the media and let them know about this Act. Don't be surprised that many of them will know little about it, this has been planned to keep it a secret until after the holidays.

After all, if the word gets out, how can these toy companies make all the money they'll need to pay for testing. Don't stand idly by, do something now...make your voice heard...let your government officials know you appreciate the fact that they seem to care about our children, (though I don't know why they think a 13 yo is immune to the toxins) but the Act, in it's current form, will have a huge trickle down effect on small business owners and cause what the handmade community is now call -2/10/09... National Bankruptcy Day!

Don't let that happen!

For more info on the the CPSIA, go to http://www.etsynj.com/ and read the National Bankruptcy Day article and links.

'til next time...
R