As an artist who really wants to just sit at the torch all day
creating
little works of art, I see from what my peers are doing, I must do more
than that. I need to focus on putting the sets of beads that I've
created together and take pictures of them to post on the web for sale!
I must focus on being more savy about promotion and sales of my work.
I've got work on Etsy http://www.etsy.com/shop/GracefulGlassDesigns ArtFire http://www.artfire.com/ext/shop/studio/gracedorsey, and occasionally I post some on eBay, but it's not getting the kind of attention I'd like to see.
After
looking at some of my peers websites and stores I noticed that most of
them have a blog. They are usually entertaining, some write on things
directly associated with the beads they are presently creating, then
some go a little off topic and that's kind of interesting. I do like to
expound upon my beads and other topics, so why not create a blog?
Especially if it helps give me exposure, after all my goal is to garner
more people to see and buy my work to be incorporated into beautiful
jewelry!
My
forte is really just making beads and not making jewelry with them.
I'm very critical of my own craftsmanship. Occasionally after spending
several hours stringing, re-stringing, twisting, untwisting, wasting
materials and blowing my top, I come up with a piece of jewelry that
pleases me. So you will rarely see me making jewelry. However, I've
recently made a necklace that I think is worthy of putting out there for
the public to buy and feel confident that it will stay together and
have no flaws....that I know of.
So
to get out of jewelry making I found some bottle openers at Michaels
that I could put my beads on. They looked pretty nice, so I gave one
away as a gift. My friend was so thrilled with it she told me that I
MUST start selling them. So I made more.
Another
great find I happened upon at the recent "Gathering" (besides new
friends) was a cool mandrel that I could make cabochons with! When I
saw it I had all kinds of ideas for what I could do with it! The first
thing I thought of was purse, or handbag hangers. I'd seen them used by
some of my friends and they were all commercially made, probably in
China. Well mine would be one of a kind! So I found a supplier and
bought a bunch of them and now I've got them on the web and in stores.
Some of the cabochons I made didn't quite fit the purse hangers so I put
them up for grabs on "Beads and More" classified. I've sold a few of
those but I wish I'd sold all of them.
So now I've completed my first blog! I hope I'll find some followers!
Take care all and if you have any ideas for me, I'm more than open to them. You can contact me at gracedorsey@att.net.
