Earrings!

[afmetalsmith]

If you're looking for earrings for yourself or a gift, and want to see a broad range of nifty ones, check out the Art Jewelry Collective's shop on Etsy. We're a group of jewelrymakers with a focus on individual design and solid craftsmanship, and the breadth of work is really amazing. Worth a visit!

In other earring news, I've finished 3 more pairs (one of which I'll probably add to the AJC promotion). I got a bit stymied on my bracelet, though; the 20-ga. 14k wire I'd gotten for the bead parts doesn't fit through the small carnelian beads I'm adding to the design. Woez! So I either need to draw down the wire I have, or get a bit of 22-ga. instead. I am probably going to do the latter, since there are a few other bits I could use from Hoover and Strong- like a couple of gold tube settings for yet more earrings I have in mind!

I also got half of the designs glued to the metal for my all-hinged bracelet. Now to start the piercing...

Comments

[afmetalsmith.livejournal.com]

Yep! :) I rather wish we still had active guilds, in some ways. Associations etc. just aren't quite the same.

But yeah- AJC is pretty cool. It's not easy to be accepted- they're quite picky about the skill level and quality of their members' work. While there's some support for technical stuff, and I think there will be more as time goes on (I hope so! since that's something I can contribute to!), right now we're mainly focused on everyone's nemesis: MARKETING. No matter how exquisite one's work- if no one knows about, it, people can't buy it! So, marketing. We do various things to draw attention to members' work, both on Etsy and off it.

For example, we're putting in an ad in the magazine "Ornament" that features a number of members' work (I'm not in this one, but hope to participate in others!).

Not a commission, really. We donate some work to the AJC shop, and when it sells they take a cut of that, and put the rest towards our participation in future ads, etc. Plus, of course, if someone sees one's work on the shop, there's a link to one's own shop!

But mostly, for me, it encourages me to both support other people and draw attention to things that members have made that I think someone would like, and inspires me to do more marketing stuff myself.

[fub.livejournal.com]

We donate some work to the AJC shop, and when it sells they take a cut of that, and put the rest towards our participation in future ads, etc.
So basically, you donate stuff in exchange for collective marketing. Is that profitable in the long run?

[afmetalsmith.livejournal.com]

In the long run? I sure hope so! I've only been in it for about 6 months, so it's fairly early days yet.

I do suspect AJC had something to do with me selling my rather fancy "Midnight Dances" earrings, though not directly; I think the publicity helped the purchaser find me, and I did sell them through Etsy.

Marketing is definitely a weak point of mine at the moment, and I'm trying to work on it. I think AJC is helping me with that, both concretely and by focusing me on it more than I had been.

Going to the studio and making cool stuff is wonderful- but I need to sell it, too!