Time is Money!

Let's talk about buying findings vs. making everything by hand. Today I wanted to make a type of necklace that required two soldered (closed) jump rings each. I only had 4 closed rings on hand and wanted to make 10 necklaces so I decided to make the jump rings myself. This is not something I do on a regular basis, so I don't own any specialized tools that would have made it easier for me.

The steps to making closed jump rings are:
1. Annealing wire (not everyone does this, but soft wire is easier to wind by hand
2. Winding wire around an appropriately sized mandrel
3. Taping the coil of wire so the cut rings don't drop onto the floor, forcing you to 'assume the position'
4. Sawing or cutting the coil into separate rings
    a. Sawing requires a jig of some sort, a professional one or a notch in your bench pin, or something else clever
    b. If you use a wire snip to cut the rings, one side will be (almost) flat/flush and the other side will be pinched - so you'll need to file or cut the other side
5. Using two pliers to close and align the jump ring closed
6. Placing solder at the seam
    a. I can never find the seam of a properly closed jump ring so I mark on either side of the opening with a Sharpie. The ink will burn away by the time the solder is ready to flow
7. Dropping the soldered jump ring in water to quench it.
8. Repeating with the other jump rings
    a. Obviously you'd want to prep all the jump rings the same way so you can solder them all at the same time.
9. Testing the jump rings to make sure they're really closed
10. Re-soldering those that aren't
    a. I'm only willing to try one more time. Anything more is annoying to me.
11. Pickling to remove the oxidation
12. Stringing on a safety pin to tumble polish or polish by hand
13.. Patinating if desired

That's a lot of steps!!! Although it is a great way to learn how to solder. Great for your assistant that is. If you have one.

Time yourself and figure out how long it takes to do these steps with 1 foot of wire. How many jump rings did you get out of it? Making jump rings is not skilled labor. Pay yourself $10.00 an hour for this task. Including the wire and your labor - how much did it cost to make one jump ring?

Now go look at a few different sites (remember to check 'chain mail' makers) and compare. How much can you buy them for, versus making them yourself? How many different sizes and gauges of jump rings do you like to use? Want to make them all?

In my mind - a jump ring is a jump ring is a jump ring. They're round pieces of wire. Period. There's nothing artistic in a jump ring. Even twisted wire ones (which I like to use and would never in a million years make) are just pretty versions of a plain old jump ring.

I made my coil using about a foot of wire, cut the rings with a wire cutter, realized I had to do all that extra work to make them look nice (instead of poorly made and 'crafty'), dropped them in the recycling jar, and got out some commercially made twisted wire jump rings and soldered them closed myself. 15 out of 20 soldered the first go 'round, 5 needed a second try. Then I strung them on a safety pin and they're happily tumbling as I write this post. (just took 'em out) I had not pickled them, and the tumbler did nothing to remove the oxidation. So now there's a little more I have to do with them. I've just spent all day on jump rings when I could have been making the necklaces. Sheesh!

So - making jump rings myself is definitely not worth my time. Every artist has to make their own decisions about their process. You might think about how much money you have in the bank that you can spend on supplies (some people have more, some have less), how much your time is worth and how annoying you find certain tasks. Then remember that if you don't pay for a commercially made finding up front - you should definitely be charging your customer for the finding that you're making by hand. So is it really cost effective in the long run?

I do like to see hand made clasps and earring wires on handmade work. So the decision on whether to buy those items commercially is totally up to the artist. But jump rings? I don't mind spending a little money to save me annoyance and time.

DIY Sales!

People always ask me - How or where do you sell your jewelry? Well, I'm primarily a teacher. I used to do two fine craft shows a year in Los Angeles, but since I moved to Richmond, taking part in shows took a back seat. Most of them are outside, and I just don't want to set up a tent or sit in the rain anymore. And the holiday shows in town are not really my market. And I haven't had a shopping cart of any kind for years. My website had also fallen into disrepair so I finally decided to do something about my online presence.

I started doing a tiny bit of research and decided that I wanted to use Square. Little did I know that SquareSpace and SquareUp are two entirely different platforms! When did I discover that little bit of information? Why, after my SquareSpace site was done of course (except for the shopping cart). And why did that make a big difference for me? Because I wanted to continue to use my Square account for the banking portion of my shopping cart. SquareSpace uses Stripe as their e-commerce provider (which has a pay as you go option, but it looks like that's in addition to the SquareSpace per transaction fee).

I have to say, both SquareSpace and SquareUp were super easy to use, set up, personalize, etc. Especially for someone like me who thinks they have no computer skills other than surfing Pinterest or commenting on FaceBook. I don't even know everything about Word or this blogging site.

Here's what I found out:

SquareSpace
• There's a small monthly fee for the website, made smaller if you actually pay yearly.
• There's also a small per transaction fee.
• You can use a custom Domain
• Options for pages, drop downs, slideshows, galleries, blogs, and other fabulous options are pretty close to endless
• There are many templates to choose from
• The ability to simply drag and drop images into all of these options is super user friendly
• I never got around to setting up the commerce section so I can't speak to anything that concerns that
• If you scroll to the bottom of any of the website pages, you can take a tour of others who have used SquareSpace to set up a website (I find this very helpful)
• There are tutorials on YouTube created by 'real people' to help you along your path
• They have 24 hr. live help if you get in trouble

SquareUp
• There is absolutely no fee at all for the website
• There is a small per transaction fee
• You can use a custom Domain
• Options are limited! Text fonts, placement, photo options, etc. are set in stone. Like it or leave it
• There are only four, very similar, templates to choose from
• The ability to upload photos is super easy and user friendly
• No one has purchased anything yet so I don't really know exactly how the commerce section goes, but it sure looks pretty!
• There is very little information or help to set it up (I'll help if you need it)
• It's super easy to create your site with any template, then use the Store Editor to test out other templates to see which one suits your needs best.
• SquareUp is partners with Weebly and three other e-commerce providers if you want a more inclusive website. I hear Weebly is also super easy to use - but haven't tried it.
• This is a scroll only website. No separate pages. No link options. No anything fancy.

I'm not good at promoting my work for sale. If someone asks me, now I can direct them to my web store. But mostly I'm a teacher, so I wanted to include some information about my classes for potential students. Because SquareUp doesn't offer any way to include separate text pages (except an 'About' section) I used the 'Events' option (instead of  'Goods or Services') to add text.  The dropdown options fall under the 'Shop' link, and you can have as many as you want - I have one for my jewelry, one for classes, one to list my blogs.  'About' and 'Contact' have their own links.  I also wanted to have an area for testimonials, so I created a jpg image in Photoshop and was able to plug it into one of the permanent image sections of my template. At some point I also want to use a custom font to superimpose "Lora Hart Jewels" over the photo of the lover's eye brooch, but I need someone with Illustrator to help me out with that. (Photoshop is too pixillated)

You might want to have a  number of sections for 'Bracelets', 'Necklaces', 'Earrings', etc. Someday I might want to add a new section for specific workshops so students can pay online. If you don't mind the scrolling, and like the simple, but clean and modern, template - SquareUp might be a good platform to start with. Even if you already have an Etsy site, It wouldn't hurt to have another place to direct your customers.

My website can be found at www.lorahart.com (for those creating a custom domain - it took a full two days for mine to become functional. The SquareUp URL worked perfectly until then).

Come and test it out, and tell me what you think. Thanks for reading, and good luck setting up a fabulous website of your own.