On one hand, custom jewelry orders are gratifying - a compliment to your skill and artistry.

Someone admires your work and trusts you enough to commission a special piece, made just for them (or for a loved one).

On the other hand, the responsibility of creating this special piece of jewelry can be a bit of a burden.

Luann Udell wrote an excellent post recently about The Quagmire of Custom Orders - her struggle to finish a custom piece of jewelry, and why custom orders often feel so difficult.

I know a few jewelry artists who always turn down custom work because they don’t enjoy it, which is certainly one way of solving this issue!

But custom jewelry orders often lead to other good opportunities for your jewelry business, so it’s a good idea to consider carefully before closing the door on them completely.

If you struggle with custom orders, what makes them difficult for you?

For me, it’s because what I love about making jewelry is letting go and being a channel for the flow of creativity with no constraints nor attachment to any outcome - just letting everything flow where it will.

I love being part of that process, and seeing the result in the finished piece of jewelry.

In contrast, a custom order that requires me to work toward fulfilling a customer’s vision of the outcome removes the part I love about jewelry making.

It’s more of a job than a creative experience.

It’s hard to get motivated to start on the project, and I usually feel that my custom work is not my best work.

However, I’ve rarely had a customer who was anything but happy with the outcome of a piece of jewelry they commissioned, and that’s the good part of custom work - the privilege of spreading joy with my art.

Related article: Making Custom Jewelry Orders Profitable.

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A market niche is a small, specialized, profitable market.

Finding and serving jewelry market niches can be a good way to develop a strong base of repeat customers and customer referrals.

It can also give you an edge when it seems like everywhere you go, everyone’s selling jewelry.

Christina Parker of Precious Sadie’s says her approach to creating jewelry “gave me a jewelry niche market that led me into a show where I might not be considered otherwise, because of the other jewelry artists.”

In Ideas for Jewelry Niche Markets Christina generously shares how she evolves the various jewelry niches she serves.

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As folks step back from careless spending and start considering each purchase more thoughtfully, handmade items take on new meaning.

What qualities attract shoppers to buy handmade?

• Uniqueness
• Skilled craftsmanship
• A personal touch
• Non-mass-produced style
• Authenticity
• Lasting value
• Embodiment of simpler times
• Artistry
• Usability
• Giftability
• Clever use of materials
• Appealing packaging
• Connecting with the artist

In addition to embodying these qualities in your art and your jewelry business, Market Insider has an excellent list of 5 Ways to Say Thanks for Buying Handmade that will encourage your customers to keep coming back.

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I came across this neat woven ring project, nicely put together by Susann of Unikatissima.

You could use this ring pattern as a springboard to make a lot of different pieces, from nearly any materials you like to work with.

It could be a great project for using up small scraps of your supplies. 

The rest of Susann’s blog, Unikatissima’s Compilation of Tutorials, is worth browsing through as well.

It contains a widely varied collection of craft projects that are sure to spark your imagination!

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Selling your finished jewelry on a regular basis helps keep money flowing into your jewelry business.

(In the retail world, it’s known as “turning over your inventory”.)

If you have finished pieces of jewelry sitting around for a long time before they sell, you’re not getting reimbursed for the money you’ve invested in the supplies and overhead (plus the value of your time) that went into creating these pieces.

So keeping inventory moving is important for all businesses that deal in tangible products - and one of the keys is [click to continue…]

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Eri Attebery, the Jewelry Making Professor, creates video tutorials and home-study courses for jewelry artists.

Her sizeable selection of single-project videos includes a couple that are well suited for the current season - Christmas Tree Earrings and a Medallion Ornament.

Her video collection also contains several other projects which I think would make nice holiday gifts.

Eri’s blog is also worth visiting - she covers a wide range of interesting topics related to making and selling jewelry, from How to Correctly Size Bracelets (which includes a short, helpful video) to Reindeer Poop Beads.  :o)

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Over at Jewelry in Fashion Trends there are always interesting interviews with successful jewelry designers, as well as useful tips on style movements that affect the jewelry marketplace.

Currently they’re featuring interviews with the emerging jewelry studio Taj Taj Design and successful jewelry designer Caroline Ballou.

I found both of these interviews insightful and inspiring - and I think you will too.

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Scanning jewelry can be an easy, fast way to get great photos of your work.

(You can see my complete tips on scanning jewelry if you’ve never done it before.)

Unfortunately, the more 3-dimensional a piece of jewelry is, the harder it is to get everything in focus - because scanners are set to focus precisely at the depth of the scanner glass, and no farther.

But even though scanning jewelry works best on flatter pieces, you still may be able to wind up with a good picture of your work.

For example, recently a jewelry artist asked me,

“Do you have any solutions for scanning jewelry that has a slightly raised stone? The stone is raised just enough to make the pendant blurry around the perimeter.”

This is a good example of a piece that’s not perfectly flat - so if you’re going to scan it, you may need to change your intention for the photo.

Sometimes in your photo editing program you can do some “sharpening” or other things (you’ll have to play around with your particular photo and image editing software to see what works best) that minimize the blurriness on the more distant parts of the piece of jewelry.

But if that fails, can you use the blurriness as an advantage?

You may be able to make it look like the more distant parts of the jewelry are purposely “romantically blurry” for effect.

Sometimes a gauzy cloth backdrop or romantically-blurry paper background can help you achieve this effect quite nicely.

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Paul of FusedGlass.org posted a great new tutorial on making glass fold-over pendants.

The “fold-over” creates a bail that’s an integral part of the glass pendant:

Glass fold-over pendants

Paul says,

“This technique is accomplished without special tools and it does not require you to manipulate hot glass.

If it sounds difficult don’t worry - it is exceptionally easy once you know how.”

Check out the fold-over pendant tutorial.

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