Tag: earrings

Not Just Beads

Sometimes I actually make things other than beads with the canes. Sometimes I make things with the beads. Of course, that’s usually right before shows but that’s the way it goes.

Marbly Bead Necklace

Marbly brown and pearl and gold beads wire wrapped the way I do a lot of my pieces.

Green Bead Necklace

Green caned beads on brass wire.

Prototyping

The prototype for a pen tray in ‘boy’ colours. I say boy colours because the boyfriend asked, mostly in fun, why I had all flowers. So here we go, brown tiles.

The last pieces are earrings on silver wire. Simple but it works.

Swirly Earrings

Little Fixes Make Big Differences

I sell at small, informal shows and so I worry less about a perfect, neat booth setup and I tend to switch things around a bit more. It’s still a basic black booth though – I use plain matte black and white as my fixtures to better emphasize and showcase the colourful clay items I sell. I want no mistake about what’s for sale!

One of the eyecatchers on my table is a rack with a LOT of earrings on it. They are all there, in a mass, and they are all shiny, colourful treasures with glass and metal glinting, showcasing the colourful clay beads in them.

Earrings! Table shot

Until this weekend, my rack was on my table. It stands about 14″ at it’s highest point, on a waist high table. So that meant that to take a good look at what had caught their eye, people were bending over, craning their neck. And they did it too. By the end of shows, I’d have sympathetic winces for it.

This past weekend, the table I had to use was smaller. It made me plan out the usage much more efficiently. And it looks much better, if I do say so myself! Of course, it was the one weekend I forgot my camera. The end result was that my earring rack moved from a front, low position to a raised position. Suddenly people did not have to bend over.

Far more people reached out to touch and, most importantly, I sold about 10 pairs more than usual.

The Lipstick Effect

With all the economic chaos I’ve started hearing about the lipstick effect again. The theory with this is that as people watch the family budget more closely they are less likely to purchase big ticket goods. Instead, they indulge in small luxuries like lipstick.

Or, I’ve noticed, earrings.

I don’t sell lipstick but I make beads and at shows, I have both beads and earrings. I also carry much more elaborate pieces of jewelry and much larger, more expensive pieces of clay work. The last show, the overall sales were not down much (hurrah!) but I did notice that people bought more of the smaller pieces. Like earrings.

Eek, there's faces in my earrings Lavender Roses
Sweetheart roses Earrings with bugs

So I have to wonder if this is the lipstick factor coming into play in my little world?