I hope all of my readers are having a restful and fun holiday weekend. We are. Friday night we were able to spend time around a campfire at our cabin on a lake in Northern Wisconsin, affectionately known here as the "Northwoods". It hasn't been a great weekend for weather here, but having some friends stay with us at our cabin made it fun, anyway!
We fished, we played card games, we had s'mores, we slept, and listened to all the night sounds of the woods. Today, we made our way home. The whole weekend gave me some time for some contemplation about my jewelry. You see, I am thinking of adding a shop for my photography.
There are a lot of reasons for this, some of them coming from the constant comments I seem to receive here on my blog about my photography. And if you follow me at all, you'll know that I have been trying to incorporate my photos into my jewelry with travel memory bracelets. I have two more of those to list this week. One of Florida and one of beaches. I love photography. It couldn't have been more evident to me than this week when I woke up about 6:15am to a pink sky! I hopped out of bed excitedly, looking for the most recent place I had put my camera. And within 5 minutes, I was on our back patio, snapping pictures! I was inspired!
I don't seem to be getting far with my jewelry.....now, I know a lot of you out there will say....hey, almost 200 sales in a little over 2 years on etsy is great! It is okay. And I have sold more than what is actually reflected in the etsy numbers. I have an annual jewelry open house that is my biggest money maker of the year for me. It's just that the handcrafted jewelry market is glutted. A problem many of of recognize and keep trying to find a space in. I want to continue to make my jewelry but think that for a while, I will concentrate on my photography and see where that leads. I think I owe that to myself.
I plan to continue to have my etsy site and will have my home jewelry open house, again this year, but the hours I've been spending trying to figure out how to be seen on etsy with my jewelry creations might be better served somewhere else. And in knowing that my home jewelry open house will again be successful, it seems a good time to pull back from pushing my beaded creations on etsy.
This revelation comes at an odd time. I told you last week that I was introducing two new jewelry lines. I've shown you my celtic ring line. And I also am making a new bracelet line for cancer survivors. These have been in the works for a month or two and I'll be showing them off in the next week or so. Those lines will continue, as will the other jewelry that is already listed in my shop. Once I have my open house, in mid-November, I'll know more about what kind of direction to go in with my creations.
If you have any comments, I'd love to hear them. In the meantime, I hope you've had some time to relax and do some thinking about your labors, as I did, on this Labor Day Weekend.
Carol
