1. Make Every Jewelry Show Profitable

2. What's New at Home Jewelry Business Success Tips:
   Four super new articles!

3. Questions and Answers from My Email Bag:
   
   • fabric for background of scanned jewelry
     
   • catalog for one-of-a-kind jewelry

4. Featured Article:
   16 Ideas for Designing Jewelry When Metal Prices Are High
   by Rena Klingenberg

5. Neat Jewelry Related Website:
   KitCo's Precious Metal Spot Charts

6. Submit a Tip and Get a Valuable Link to Your Website

My new jewelry ebook, Ultimate Guide to Your Profitable Jewelry Booth, hit the Internet on July 5. It's been selling like crazy, far beyond what I expected, and I want to thank everyone who has bought it and sent me lovely messages such as these:

• "I just wanted to thank you for your awesome EBook, that I purchased. I am new to the business and your book has been a god send, your generosity in sharing such information is much appreciated, keep up the good work."

• "This will really help in getting my business started. I am glad that you have provided us with the information needed to avoid many costly mistakes."

• "The bonus resources alone were worth investing in your ebook."

Don't wait to discover hundreds of things you can do to sell your jewelry like crazy at shows, fairs, and festivals. Invest in this 176-page, step-by-step resource before your next show:

Here are the latest information-packed jewelry business articles since our last issue:

1. Credit Card Scam Foiled by a Jewelry Artist
   Don't become a credit card scam victim. If a jewelry order feels fishy or sounds too good to be true - be very careful. Susan Midlarsky of Aspiring Arts shares how she investigated an international order that didn't seem quite right, and discovered that it was indeed fraudulent.




2. Art Fair Selection
   How do you decide which art fairs to apply to? Ellen Leonard of Prophecy Girl Designs shows you how to find events that are compatible with your jewelry, set your schedule of shows, and assess your competition for the most profitable results.




3. Jewelry Pricing: The Time Factor
   Jewelry pricing is a challenge for most artists. One of the trickiest elements in determining a price for your work is placing a value on the time you spend creating a piece. Lynne Richardson of Bon Ton Beads offers helpful insights into your jewelry-making time and its monetary value.




4. Jewelry Pricing Formula
   A jewelry pricing formula can help you determine how much to charge for your creations. Here's the two-step system I use for pricing jewelry for maximum profitability. Readers often ask me how I price my jewelry, so here it is!

What unique experiences or knowledge have you gained in your own jewelry business quest? You can share your story or advice, and build traffic to your website when you submit a jewelry business article. You'll receive a free permanent link from Home Jewelry Business Success Tips to your website - and your article will be read by thousands of people in the jewelry industry. Our guest authors report a significant flow of traffic coming from their article links on Home Jewelry Business Success Tips!

Question from Glenda Ann:

When you talk of fabric "backgrounds" for scanned photos of your work, do you merely drape the fabric over the piece after you have it arranged?

Rena's answer:

Yes, that's right. I arrange the jewelry face-down on the scanner glass, and then lay the fabric directly on top of the backside of the jewelry. Depending on the fabric, you might drape it with a little artistic crumple (if it's lightweight like gauze or mosquito netting) or smooth it out as much as possible (if it's sturdier like denim or heavy velvet).

Question from Rachel:

I've had several customers request a catalog of my work. The problem is that, like many designers, most of my pieces are one of a kind, so while I love the idea of having a catalog, I can't come up with a practical way of setting something like that up.

Rena's answer:

For one-of-a-kind pieces, it's hard to justify the cost of a printed sales catalog of your current work, unless your pieces are very high-end. Photo quality is extremely important in selling jewelry via catalogs, but even do-it-yourself color photocopies or computer printouts get expensive quickly, and you'd have to keep printing up a new catalog of your current work. Here a few options; you could do just one of these, or all of them:

• Put up a website with photos and descriptions of your current pieces, and tell your customers your catalog is online because your work is one-of-a-kind.

• Have business cards printed up with a photo of one of your best pieces on the front, and photos of a few more pieces on the back. In the text of your card, mention something about "one-of-a-kind designs", and direct customers to your website URL for currently available pieces.

• Design and print flyers or small brochures showing a few of your very best pieces, with accompanying text mentioning that these photos are samples from your gallery of sold work and each piece you create is unique. Again, direct customers to your website URL for currently available pieces.

• Publish an email newsletter for your customers, with photos or links to your newest one-of-a-kind pieces. You can call this email update a catalog - "Rachel's August 2006 Jewelry Catalog".

For the business cards, flyers, and brochures, you'll get the best quality and prices via an online printing service such as VistaPrint .

For the past several months jewelry artists have been watching precious metal prices climb steadily toward new record highs.

Although this is the time of year when I usually work on building up my jewelry inventory for the Fall selling season, I'm hesitant to dip *too* deeply into my sterling silver and 14k goldfill components, chain, and wire right now. They're going to be expensive to replace.

The last time I replenished my stash of metals was several months ago, at prices that were much lower than they are now (although the prices I paid back then seemed high at the time!). But since then I've made and sold a lot of jewelry, so parts of my metal inventory are starting to get a bit thin - and I don't want to run out of anything completely.

Yet I don't want to have to replace too much of my stash right now, while precious metals keep dancing around all-time high prices. So I'm considering ways to be a bit more frugal with sterling silver and 14k goldfill in some of my jewelry designs for this Fall.

Here are 16 ideas for designing jewelry with an eye to reducing your silver and gold component purchases when precious metal prices are high:

1. Use some alternative metals (copper, pewter, steel, etc.), either to completely replace silver or gold in some designs, or to mix with silver and gold.

2. Take apart your older unsold jewelry and separate out the precious metal components. Tumble the sterling and goldfill components (separately) to a stunning shine, and recycle them into fresh jewelry designs.

3. Design jewelry that uses up your metal scraps instead of new metal components.

4. Use less metal in your jewelry designs, and more of other elements.

5. Make smaller pieces of jewelry, which inherently contain less of everything.

6. Replace metal chain in your designs with ribbon, rubber, cotton, linen, silk, leather, or suede cord.

7. Design clasp-free necklaces - for example: one long continuous strand, a lariat, or a cord with sliding adjustable knots.

8. Save money by using the same amount of precious metal in your designs, but using less expensive accompanying components.

9. Use lighter or more open-work chain instead of dense chain in your designs. It's less expensive since it weighs less per inch.

10. Create jewelry that uses finer gauges of wire - again, it's less costly because of the reduced weight.

11. Capitalize on the current trend of wood and shell jewelry.

12. Learn some new jewelry skills using non-metal media. For example - beadweaving, polymer clay, lampwork, etc.

13. Make your own findings from your scraps. You can fashion a variety of clasps from scrap metals and other materials, and you can make your own headpins, earwires, etc. from scrap wire.

14. Use vintage metal components from thrift shops, estate sales, yard sales, etc. You'll have to cut apart and thoroughly clean your finds, but you'll likely wind up with some really interesting elements to use.

15. Consider purchasing your precious metal components as part of a jewelry supply bulk-buying group.

16. Trade in your scrap metal collection when buying more precious metal components.

Don't feel as though you're economizing. Instead, enjoy the creative challenge of coming up with jewelry designs that depend less on new precious metal components and more on other elements!

And while we're talking about precious metal prices - wouldn't it be great to know the current prices of silver and gold, so you could jump on ordering your metal supplies as soon as prices dipped down a bit?

Well, thanks to KitCo Bullion Dealers, you can. At any given moment you can check the most recent pricing on the roller-coaster metal markets:

• 24-hour spot chart for silver
  
• 24-hour spot chart for gold

You may want to bookmark these metal spot charts and refer to them before buying any wire, PMC, sheet metal, findings, etc. Most jewelry suppliers base their metal component prices on the market price either at the time of your order, or at the close of that day. So you may be able to save some money by keeping tabs on the market price before ordering.

Another interesting thing to check on the above links: Scroll down below the current metal price charts to see precious metal prices graphed for the past 30 days, 60 days, 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, and 10 years.

Warning: You'll wish you'd stocked up on your sterling silver components back on November 22, 2001! :o)

Do you have a good idea, handy hint, or helpful technique related to jewelry business or jewelry making? Send in a tip that's useful to jewelry artists and receive a free link to your website when your tip is published in the Jewelry Business Blog.

And thank you to the creative readers who have been sending in your truly excellent tips! Many of them have been published already, and more are coming. If you've sent in a tip but it hasn't yet been published in the blog - don't worry, it's coming soon!

Looking for specific jewelry business information or the answer to a question? Try our "Search This Site" feature to scour Home Jewelry Business Success Tips for any keywords you enter.

We have over 300 articles on Home Jewelry Business Success Tips now, and new posts several days a week in the Jewelry Business Blog - plus lots more coming up - and sometimes knowing where to find specific information among so many articles can be tricky. But now you can search easily and find what you're seeking.

If your search doesn't turn up any results for our site, then you've discovered a topic we need to add - so please let me know the info or tips that are missing from our site.