Dishfunctional Designs: How To Price Your Handmade Jewelry (AND My New Jewelry Supply Book Now Available!)

Hey Jewelry Making Friends!

It's finally here! My brand new book: Jewelry Supply Log Book is now available for purchase on Amazon and I am going to tell you why you are going to LOVE this brand new book.

It's so important to stay organized. When you begin your journey into the world of jewelry making, you can quickly get caught up in a storm of beads, components, finding, wire, chain, and all sorts of little parts - some of which you may not even be completely sure what they are for (at least not in the beginning when you are just starting out.)

Beads by themselves are mesmerizing - and stones too - and boy, do they start to pile up once you start buying a strand here and a strand there. Most of us start with plastic bead boxes with small compartments to store our beads. One bead box quickly turns into two, then two turn into four, then four to eight...you get the picture.

And that's great! Having a place to organize and store your beads and jewelry supplies is the smart first step to take.

But I can PROMISE you, a little bit down the road, once you have gotten full-force into creating jewelry, there will come a day when you search your bead box for a particular bead or component...and you will find that you have only one, or even none, left. THIS is that point in time that I am talking about.

Trust me, you will rack your brain trying to remember where you bought them, how much you paid, even exactly what they were!

In one of my recent YouTube videos I showed you how I organize my beads and jewelry making supplies (here's the link if you missed it) and one thing I point out in the video is that when I fill a compartment in my bead box with beads I also stick the tag from the packaging into the same compartment with the beads, so when I need to order more I know where I got them from.

That is smart move number two! It only takes a moment to do and you will thank yourself down the road. But that's only PART of it. When you get to the point that you are SELLING your jewelry, it's then time to take your organization up a notch! Now, if you know about jewelry making and selling your handmade jewelry, then you probably already know that there is a formula that you should be using to price your jewelry.

I see so many people either overpricing or underpricing their jewelry - and in both cases, they are doing themselves a great disservice! When you do this you are over-valuing and/or under-valuing your jewelry, and basically cheating yourself.

I always say that I can always tell when someone is too attached to the things they make and they do not really want to sell them - the prices are usually very high for what the item is. Or they could just have a convoluted view of the value of what they are making. Underpricing your jewelry is just as bad. When you add up the price of the beads and components that you put into a piece and then account for your time spent making it, and then price it very low - you may as well just give it away for free, because you aren't going to make any profit.

Now. There is a learning curve when you start making jewelry that has to be accounted for in your pricing. When you are just learning and starting out and want to sell your jewelry, you will not get as much as you would for pieces that you sell later on when you have perfected your skills and techniques. That's just how it is - and that's how it should be. That's just something to keep in mind.

And I will add, I too am guilty of not using the jewelry pricing formula at times, and I regret it. I would rather spend my time creating things than doing bookwork and accounting LOL.

I never really bothered to keep track of what I paid for beads - both inexpensive and expensive. Sure I keep records and receipts for my business and for taxes, etc. But they are gathered in a box and once I bring the beads or supplies home and remove the packaging and organize them into my bead box, the receipt goes into a box on a shelf until tax time.

For a while I had a small notebook where I tried to keep track of the beads and supplies I owned. When I'd get busy it was easy to skip writing things down and keeping track of things. Some folks suggest creating a spreadsheet or some type of log on their computer to keep track of supplies, but that's typing in data and I much prefer writing things down the romantic, old fashioned way with a pen and book! Of course my sketchbook is an entity within itself, and is full of drawings and ideas but that's about it. I thought long and hard about what I needed, what I wanted, what would work best for me, what my ideal way of keeping track and organizing all of my beads, findings, and jewelry making supplies would be.

And so I created this book.

I formatted this book with great thought and care, and even designed the cover myself.

I just love it. Each separate page is for logging or recording a certain individual bead or supply item, and the pages are all preformatted, so all you have to do is fill in the blanks. Each entry has spaces for things like: where you bought it and when, color, size/dimensions, how many pieces came in a package or on a strand, the price paid for the package/strand, and most importantly - once you divide the number of pieces that came in the package into the price you paid for the entire package - the price PER PIECE.

This is an essential thing to know so that you can price your jewelry properly.

Example:

Let's say you purchase a strand of beads that contains 30 beads and you paid $17.00 USD for the strand.

$17.00 ÷ 30 beads = $0.56 per bead.

By keeping track of and recording this information you can price your jewelry much more appropriately than just guessing and making up a price.

This book has spaces where you can fill in all of that information, but here is my favorite part: I created a space below each item entry where you can sketch design ideas or jot down notes!

I created this book in different covers so you can choose one that suits your own personal tastes. Check them out on Amazon and don't forget to order early for Christmas! Check them out below!