a crystals & jewelry adventure

Eni Oken has a new wire jewelry tutorial up: Border for Net Bezel Pendant.  So go get it already. ;)  No, Eni doesn’t pay me for telling you about her tutorials. Sheesh. Someone actually asked me that.  I just think they’re great, and I think you will too.

Know of other jewelry making tutorials?  Let me know. I’m always interested in learning more. And I can share the info with folks here too.

And again, I have to say: Pay for your tutorials if Eni and others sell them. They can make this huge amount of work inexpensive for each of us only if we each do our part. Respect the artists who share their talent with these inexpensive tutorials: buy yours and don’t share it or sell it to others.  If we had to go the traditional route and buy these in a book, they’d cost more and we’d have to wait for a whole book-worth to be ready. Ugh. I’d not like that.

Eni Oken has another new tutorial up. Woo!  Go get it right here.  This one is a spiral pendant. Yum yum.

As I mention every time, do Eni and all of us all a favor, don’t share them or give them to folks - if we all pay for them, she can keep her prices outrageously low like they are now.  She does incredibly high quality tutorials with tons of photos and great instructions. They’re more than worth the few bucks she asks for them.

Gotta Market Your Jewelry Website

I did a post  in May about Making a Jewelry Website. This is the next article in the series.

Build it and they will come just doesn’t work on the web. So you have to market your site. Over and over and over again. It’s a never-ending process.  And they all cost time, energy, and some money. Some cost a little. Others cost a lot. 

Email Newsletter

It’s almost impossible to have a successful website without having an email newsletter. And as marketing tools go, email newsletters are inexpensive. My sales go up by 300% or more the day after my newsletter goes out. Whoa!  Why is that?  Basically, because it reminds folks about your site. There are literally billions of sites out there, and there’s no way any one person can remember them all. So send them a reminder. Start one yourself as soon as you start your website. Need more convincing?  You can go all over the web and find more info about it, just google it or yahoo it.  Try "email marketing" for a search term.

The mailing list service I use is  Your Mailing List Provider and they’ve been great for the whole time I’ve used them. Their double opt-in and bounce handling options make doing a newsletter so much easier than it used to be. Plus, you can do HTML or text newsletters or both. And they keep adding features that are super-handy. For the money, they’re the best I’ve found.

Tips for Email Newsletters

• Do it in HTML within the email itself.
  Make it pretty. Use photos judiciously, but do use them.
• Put the newsletter IN the email. Don’t expect your readers to open your email, then click on a link to go to your site to read your newsletter. Make it easy for them.
• Make it interesting to your readers.
  Readers might become buyers. So make it fun for them to subscribe to it and read it.
• Do NOT make it just "I’m selling this now." 
  That will kill an email newsletter almost as fast as not sending one at all. You can do that occasionally — if your newsletter is normally interesting — but doing it regularly makes people unsubscribe or delete the newsletter.
• Write your newsletter like you were talking to them personally.
  Grammar and punctuation need not be perfect. A friendly tone is needed.
• Send out your newsletter no more than once a week.
  More than that and it comes across as spam. Unless you have that many really fun things to say, that is.
• Write your newsletter regularly and purposefully, even when you have a small number of subscribers.
  If you don’t, you’ll end up with no subscribers at all.

Email newsletters are great marketing tools, but they also have to be fun and interesting to your readers. 

Sterling Silver is 925 parts out of 1000 silver by law in the USA. So sterling silver is mostly (92.5%) real, honest-to-God silver. The other 75 out of 1000 parts can be any metal and may vary by the recipe any given refinery uses, although it’s normally mostly copper. Sterling Silver, .925 Silver, and .925 Sterling Silver (sometimes called "traditional sterling silver") all mean exactly the same thing: that it’s  92.5% silver and 7.5% other metals.

.925 Argentium® sterling silver, (Argentium®) is a proprietary alloy that contains germanium as part of the 75 parts out of 1000 that are not silver in sterling. The germanium in Argentium® makes it a real sterling silver that is far, FAR more tarnish-resistant than traditional sterling silver.

Anything I have that I show or mark at CrystalsAndJewelry.com as sterling silver or .925 sterling silver is 925 parts out of 1000 silver. Additionally, anything that I show or mark Argentium® sterling silver is 925 parts out of 1000 silver and also has germanium in it.

Several people have asked recently if I could tell them how to make jewelry with crystals like I do, or recommend a good book about it, or do I teach classes. Unfortunately, I really can’t tell anyone exactly. I’d have to write a book myself, since I’ve never seen one about making jewelry with crystals and natural stones.  And at this time, I don’t teach classes or write tutorials because there aren’t enough hours in the day for me as it is. :)  I can give you some information on how I learned to do what I do, and how you can learn it too.

I’ve spent the last several years making wire and crystal or gemstone jewelry virtually every day.  I also have earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in jewelry making, where I studied casting, fabrication, and many other jewelry techniques. I’m fairly sure that it’s not necessary to get a degree of any sort because I’ve seen work far better than mine made by people who didn’t have a degree, but the time spent learning about making jewelry, and actually practicing making it, probably is an absolute requirement. I’m quite sure anyone can learn to make jewelry as well as I do or better, if they’re willing to put forth the effort to learn and practice.

Here are some of the  online tutorials and resources I used to learn more about making wire jewelry in general, and I applied the principles learned first to regular shaped stones like cabochons, then to crystals and natural stones.

• Eni Oken’s Jewelry Lessons - ranging from beginner to advanced, great, inexpensive tutorials and lessons. and I’ve incorporated many of Eni’s techniques into my own work
• Studio Heath - also ranging from beginner to advanced, inexpensive lessons that are well worth the small cost, again, many techniques I’ve incoporated many of DK Heath’s techniques into my work
• Wire Sculpture.com - many DVD’s and online videos for sale, much more expensive than either Eni Oken’s or DK Heath’s tutorials, but if you prefer demonstrations and can’t get to a class, this would probably work well for you 

And here are a couple of of the books I’ve used to learn techniques I use for making jewelry with crystals and natural stones.

The ultimate key is to keep learning and to practice. Practice until your fingers know instinctively how to make the wire behave the way you want it to. Learn different ways to shape the wire so that it will hold the crystals or stones firmly. Practice until you no longer have to think about it step by step. Then learn and practice some more. If you’re not sure what I mean by the difference pratice makes, check the pendant to the left, which I made in 2002 and the one to the right which I made in 2007.

Good luck in your learning and practice! 

I am often asked about how my website CrystalsandJewelry.com is done and what I recommend for jewelry artists wanting to start their own sites. I have done my whole site on my own, and still do. I had an "unfair" advantage with getting my site together because I was a professional web and graphic designer when I started CrystalsandJewelry.com. So it wasn’t exactly a leap for me.  That’s not the case for most folks, though!  So here are some tips on things I use and recommend for starting your own jewelry site.

The single most important tip I can give you is this: Once you start doing jewelry as a business, in many ways, it’s a job, not an adventure. The making jewelry is still an adventure, but so many other things are business, that sometimes the fun of making jewelry can get lost in it all. Consider what that means before you take the leap. Consider it again. Consider it yet again. Then, if you’re still interested, have at it! 

I’m not saying that to discourage you from starting a jewelry website, by any means. I don’t  worry about competition from other jewelry artists because we each have our own unique style and personality that we bring to our jewelry and our websites.  I do, though, want you to realize what a large undertaking a successful jewelry website is. I’ve seen many excellent jewelry artists become discouraged and even stop making jewelry altogether because they thought doing a website would be an easy way to make a buck, but found it wasn’t. I don’t want that to happen to you. It’s not easy to have a successful website of any sort. It can, however, be a great way to do business and get your jewelry recognized.

All that said, let’s have at some of the basics of actually putting a site together.

Gotta Have Photos

It’s fairly obvious that if you want to sell jewelry on the web, you have to have decent photos of the jewelry.  The best resource I’ve ever found for photographing jewelry photos is here. But here’s my two cents worth also.

• Camera - I use an old Olympus 740C with ultra zoom (macro) and 3.1 megapixels and it’s more than enough for web photos. The features it has include all these things below that are either necessary or just really helpful.
• Macro capability is a must for any camera for photographing jewelry.
• Megapixels, not so much if you’re only going to be putting photos on the web.
• Other features that are super-handy are white balance control, auto focus, and color balance control.
• Lighting - Cloud Domes, Photo Tents, and photography lights all help. Rather than go into them all here, check Rena’s site for tips.
• Photo Editing Software
• The cream of the crop is Adobe Photoshop, but it’s also overkill if you’re just doing photos for the web, in my opinion.  If you have the $700+, nab it, it’s the best. If you don’t, try one of these:
• Photoshop Elements which is essentially Photoshop Lite. I’ve heard really good things about it, although I’ve not tried it. Cost: Around $100
• GIMP or GIMPShop - Two open source photo editing softwares with great reputations. And the price can’t be beat. Cost: FREE
  Personally, I use Photoshop because I already had it when I was doing professional web and graphic design. If I were starting out now, though, I’d go with GIMP or GIMPShop.

Gotta Have a Way to Get Your Site Out There

One thing  to think about before you go making your own site is whether you really need a site all of its own, or whether a blog format would do. Since I’m talking about websites as opposed to blogs, my info here is assuming you want to do a website. 

• Pay someone to do it.
  If you have a lot of money and not a lot of time, this is the way to go.  Be aware, though, that there are inherent communication issues between the geek-minded and the art-minded. Plus, you may have to wait in line behind other customers to get things on your site updated or changed.
• Do It Yourself the Website Way
  Time-consuming, and there are a lot of things involved, but you have total creative and content control and it’s less expensive in cash.
• Web Design Software
  WYSIWYG web design software is the easiest for most artists to use. WYSIWYG is What You See is What You Get. It’s not exactly true, but it’s relatively close. And it’s easy for the non-programming-minded compared to learning to code by hand. Trust me on that one. My first website was done in 1995 and I coded it by hand.
  
• Coffecup HTML Editor - It does HTML code AND WYSIWYG! If you go with a year prepaid at LunarPages.com , they give you this free. If you buy it yourself, it’s only $49 — Cheap for what you get.
• Dreamweaver - The Rolls Royce of WYSIWYG by far. This is what I use because I love the Library and Template Features and it updates links for me all over the site. The downside is that it has a jillion features you’ll probably never use, it runs like poop on an older pc, and it’s around $700.
• Another option is canned site designers offered by web hosts. I’ve never found one I liked, so I’m not keen on this option. It is one, though, so you might want to look into it.
• Domain Name
  You’ve GOT to have your own domain name. They’re so cheap now that it’s ludicrous to even consider not  having one. You can get one for $8.95 a year for .com domains, or less, at Godaddy.com. I’ve been using them for several years now as a domain name registrar and have never had a problem, which I can’t say for the other folks I’ve used in the past, including Network Solutions.
• Web Hosting
  Without reservation, I recommend LunarPages.com, where I host CrystalsandJewelry.com. They are rock solid, and you have to have that to do business online. I made the mistake of moving away from them once, and within 2 months I was back. No more of that.  I’m back and don’t expect I’ll go anywhere for the forseeable future.  And if you don’t trust my affiliate link above, just go straight to their home page at LunarPages.com. I don’t need the couple of bucks from affiliate sales nearly as much as you need good web hosting.

Are you tired of reading yet? hehehe This is just the tip of the jewelry website iceberg. I’ll be doing articles on your site’s theme or niche, e-commerce choices, marketing your website, and other tips on making jewelry websites for you in the near future. Join my newsletter email list or just pop back occasionally to find out when they’re available.

Sometimes life throws lessons at me. And sometimes I’m lucky enough to have them thrown at me gently. This is one of those times.

Many of you who have kept up with my blog or my site at all, know already that I’ve learned a ton from Eni Oken’s tutorials. Yep, I have no trouble admitting that. She’s great with them!  And some of my jewelry is quite obviously based on things I’ve learned from her. I’ve no trouble admitting that either. And I’d like to give her credit for those. I’d never have learned many techniques without her generosity in sharing techniques she’s figured out.

 BUT…

Where I’ve blown it recently is that I didn’t mention any of that on the page where that jewelry is shown and sold.  Using templates to get jewelry up quicker has bitten me on the you know what, as far as that goes.  I’ve been using templates without checking to make sure things like mentioning Eni’s work get mentioned. Argh! Yes, I know that I’ve been reeling lately with changes of bipolar disorder medications changes, but it’s still not good to miss something like that. It’s especially not good when all I have to do to fix it is make another template for when I have new jewelry along those lines.  It doesn’t make anyone feel good to blunder like that, and can make some folks think that I don’t appreciate and acknowledge Eni’s incredible help in learning everything. Or worse yet, some may believe I’m copying her exact jewelry. So I’m working to get all that fixed. It will take a little time, but it’s more than worth it. Although Eni doesn’t actually require any acknowledgment of using her tutorials, she’s a great person and deserves it. I just feel incredibly silly for not catching myself with my website templates. And I feel incredibly lucky that she’s not the type of person who would be nasty about it or worse, over my making such a silly mistake.

The lesson? Pay attention to website templates (or pages if you don’t use templates) when you put jewelry on the web. You may not be so lucky with your lesson.

And go visit Eni Oken’s site. She has a new tutorial up!  I’ve got it, and you may well see something based on it soon. Of couse, this time I’ll get it right on the jewelry page the first time.

Yep, I almost missed it. Eni Oken has another new tutorial out there. This one is for an ethnic style ring. Go get this one, too. Why? See my previous post on her tutorials for the answer.

[tags]jewelry tutorial, tutorials, ring tutorial[/tags] 

Extra! Extra!  Eni Oken has a new jewelry tutorial up that you can buy online. Go Get It Now!
It’s the Basket Weave Bezel in the Advanced Tutorials section.  It’s only a few measly bucks, so there’s no excuse not to get it if you want to learn more about doing wire work.

It may sound a little odd for me to be pimping someone else’s jewely tutorials, but there’s a good reason. Eni does great tutorials. Period. And I’ve learned so much from her tutorials over the last couple of years that I’m more than happy to send you over there. Maybe she’ll make more if she sells more of the ones she’s done, and I’d love that!

Many of her tutorials, as with this Basket Weave Bezel tutorial, are for designs or techniques similar to ones that I have already figured out or come up with myself, but it’s well worth the couple of dollars to me because there’s always something more I learn from her tutorials. It may be a on that technique, or a seemingly small tip on wire work in general, but I always get something worthwhile from her tutorials.  Those seemingly small tips can add up to dozens of hours saved, or headsful of hair not pulled out, over the course of a year.  I highly recommend buying every single tutorial she has. And of course, grab the free ones too!

And while I’m talking about Eni’s tutorials, let me add this about all tutorials you get… Don’t share them or give them away, please! And for goodness sake, don’t go sell them yourself. Eni and the others who write tutorials for us and charge such small prices do a huge amount of work on them, and deserve to get paid for every single use of their tutorials. If you find yourself in a situation where you just have to share a tutorial, turn right around and go pay Eni for it. I’ve done that before, when I gave a friend who didn’t have net access a printed copy of one of Eni’s tutorials. It’s only fair. If we abuse their hard work and generosity in making tutorials for items we can sell once we learn the techniques, it’s bad karma and will eventually cause them to either stop doing it or start having to charge much higher prices.  Respect your tutorial-makers, please.

One of the lessons I learned when I was in art school that has turned out to be invaluable to me was taught not by a jeweller or metalsmith, but by a drawing teacher. It was my first year of art school, during the torture training period of art foundation that all freshmen had to survive go through. This particular lesson was taught during a critique of our drawings of a model that we’d worked on during several of the preceding classes. I hated it at the time, but it taught me something that’s saved my sanity I have many times. In the end, I became grateful for the lesson, which applies to making jewelry as well as any other type of art or craft.

The story…

Once upon a time a girl named Robyn went to art school. She had a drawing class where she worked very hard on a drawing of a model. She spent many hours on this drawing, and was very proud of it when it was finished. When the class gathered for the professor to critique their drawings, the professor instructed them to lay them in a line on the floor where we could all see them. With just a bit of nervousness about getting her precious drawing dirty, Robyn placed it in the line on the floor.  The professor commenced to critique the drawings at one end of the line. Much to the alarm of the student artists, as he moved down the line of drawings, he walked on the ones he had previously critiqued as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Eyes got round as the face of Big Ben, lower lips were chewed, fingers twitched, but not one student said a word. After critiquing and walking down the line of about half of the drawings, the professor stopped, grinned and said to us, "Yes, I’m walking on your drawings. Why? Because if you’re going to be a professional artist, you need to learn this now.  Reviewers and galleries will disrespect your work and pick it to pieces verbally and publicly, in front of you and behind your back, without caring about your feelings at all. Customers will do as the reviewers will do, and worse. They will stuff it in closets, hang it upside down, break it, throw it away, and anything else they feel like. Get used to the idea NOW that your work is just an object to most people, a lot like tupperware. At least, until you’re dead or very famous for it."

Moral of the story: Your work isn’t precious to anyone but you (and maybe your mother). Get used to it. Now. It will save you a lot of agonizing heartache.