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Thread: Sparkly things

  1. #1
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    Default Sparkly things

    Hi, I thought you may like to see some of the stuff I have made fairly recently. Your comments on improving my finish would be appreciated.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails 2010-12-01 08.20.20 [320x200].jpg   2010-11-21 10.07.18 [320x200].jpg   2010-10-14 17.17.05 [320x200].jpg   heart bangle.jpg   Photo0133.jpg  


  2. #2
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    The last 3 pictures are a bit small to make any significant comment - do you have any links to larger versions?

    The rubover-set ring looks quite nice; is that a cab or faceted stone in it? And do you think it might benefit from bright-cutting the inside edge of the bezel?

    How are you finishing pieces at the moment?

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by ps_bond View Post
    The last 3 pictures are a bit small to make any significant comment - do you have any links to larger versions?

    The rubover-set ring looks quite nice; is that a cab or faceted stone in it? And do you think it might benefit from bright-cutting the inside edge of the bezel?

    How are you finishing pieces at the moment?
    I am very sorry but my knowledge isnt that good, I dont know what you mean by bright cutting. I went to an evening class for one evening a week just about 18 months ago, the lady that was taking the course took over from the previous teacher who was taken ill, and she nominated her best pupil to teach the remaining months, which is where I started, and although she had been making stuff herself for quite a while, her knowledge was limited, for instance she had never set a faceted stone, so consequently I have never learnt to, so all the stuff is done with cabachons at the moment. I am saving up my pennies to go to the Jewellery School in Cornwall to do some of the more advanced stuff. I have a lovely faceted garnet that I have had several attempts to make a claw setting for, but failed miserably. Keep your head down and keep going.
    Pat

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by ps_bond View Post
    The last 3 pictures are a bit small to make any significant comment - do you have any links to larger versions?

    The rubover-set ring looks quite nice; is that a cab or faceted stone in it? And do you think it might benefit from bright-cutting the inside edge of the bezel?

    How are you finishing pieces at the moment?
    Sorry I didnt answer your question, I have a website which is under construction by my teckie husband when he has time !!!

    www.nine2five-silver.co.uk

    You should be able to see some stuff there, but not sure what stage its at right now. My daughter and I have been to
    two local shows and have sold about £100 of stuff each, the next one is in Sept. I had a couple of orders from people at the last show which have been sent off and the recipients are thrilled with and another order in the pipeline. I am having a bit of conflict with my daughter at the moment because she wants to keep the cost very low, and isnt really counting the cost of her labour, just the cost of the silver etc and £5 on top, whereas I think if its good enough quality to want to buy, you must pay the price.
    Pat

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by Patstone View Post
    I am very sorry but my knowledge isnt that good, I dont know what you mean by bright cutting.
    My apologies Pat - I'm referring to refining the inside edge of the setting with a polished flat graver (or scorper!); it's sort of a combined burnishing/cutting action that tarts up settings quite nicely.

    I have a lovely faceted garnet that I have had several attempts to make a claw setting for, but failed miserably.
    Do you have a copy of Cogswell, or the newer book by Sonia Cheadle? Both of them cover a lot of settings quite well. It depends upon your learning preference, really.

    Quote Originally Posted by Patstone View Post
    Sorry I didnt answer your question, I have a website which is under construction by my teckie husband when he has time !!!
    Oh yes, time... Heard of it

    You should be able to see some stuff there, but not sure what stage its at right now. My daughter and I have been to
    two local shows and have sold about £100 of stuff each, the next one is in Sept. I had a couple of orders from people at the last show which have been sent off and the recipients are thrilled with and another order in the pipeline. I am having a bit of conflict with my daughter at the moment because she wants to keep the cost very low, and isnt really counting the cost of her labour, just the cost of the silver etc and £5 on top, whereas I think if its good enough quality to want to buy, you must pay the price.
    Argh! I'd fully agree with you - don't disregard the time this takes. You aren't - and shouldn't be - competing with mass produced jewellery, you're making hand-made items.

  6. #6
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    Pat, just looking at your website, you really do need to hallmark a lot of the pieces shown - you're describing them as sterling silver, but I don't see any mention that they've been assayed.

    As the site is live, and therefore needs to comply with the distance selling regulations, I'd also very strongly recommend you get some terms and conditions up there, and in particular you need to include an full postal address.

    I did notice a lot of the pieces look very, very much too cheap for the amount of metal that appears to be in there. There's a great article on pricing here: http://www.ejrbeads.co.uk/pricingjewellery.htm that gives some excellent advice, but a lot of people simply double the cost of materials and add an hourly rate for their time to reach a wholesale price.

    I'm not going to comment on the pieces shown, simply because I can't see them well enough to be helpful. I wonder if you need some more lighting for the photos?

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by mizgeorge View Post
    I did notice a lot of the pieces look very, very much too cheap for the amount of metal that appears to be in there. There's a great article on pricing here: http://www.ejrbeads.co.uk/pricingjewellery.htm that gives some excellent advice, but a lot of people simply double the cost of materials and add an hourly rate for their time to reach a wholesale price.
    That is a VERY useful site, it's so hard to know how to price your creations...

    Pat, may I suggest showing photos of your creations from several different angles, and also closer up to see more detail? More lighting, as George suggested, would be good. You don't need an elaborate setup, (although I do have more elaborate kit for my other persona of photographer) I just take pictures in front of a bright window with a homemade reflector made by glueing some crumpled and flattened silver foil to a piece of card. I can get as good a result for the web using that with hubby's compact as I can with an enormous pro camera, light tent and bouncy flash. Does your camera have a macro setting?

    I've just ordered a copy of the Sonia Cheadle book, looks like it will be a valuable addition to my shelf! Thanks for the recommendation - I did look for the Cogswell one, but can't find a copy for under £45 anywhere (all the usual suspects like eBay, Amazon and Abebooks), so hopefully the one I DID get will do the trick :-)
    Last edited by Melanie De Castro Pugh; 18-07-2011 at 05:51 PM. Reason: And another thing...

  8. #8
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    My daughter and I are going to get things assayed and are in the process of doing so. We haven't advertised our website and haven't given the web address out apart from to friends so they can look to see the things we can do, rather than to sell things yet, and there is no facility to pay for anything anyway, but realise that is another issue that needs addressing. I am new to forums too, so I thought that Peter was the only one that could see it - it was for his eyes only !!!! whoops.

    This jewellery thing started out as a hobby, and its getting a bit out of hand, hubby suggested that I sell some of the stuff because I was collecting rather a lot, originally it was meant for meeeeeeeee, hence the website. Sam, my daughter suggested going to a few local shows to sell enough to pay for the silver, and thats sort of where we are at the moment until someone mentioned the assaying, because we both thought it was for heavier stuff than ours, naive or what!!!!
    Well you learn by your mistakes, and ours is quite a steep learning curve at the moment.

    The photo's were taken by my Samsung Galaxy S2 phone, but the lighting is an issue and we are going to try to get some more light on them, none have been touched up, they are all as they are. I have tried with my 5 megapixel camera but the phone (which is 8 megapixels) ones are better, I am hoping to get my dad to do some for me as he used to teach photography in evening courses at the Exeter College many years ago. At least to glean some information from him, if nothing else.

    All your help is really appreciated because we are both complete novices at doing this sort of thing, and dont know of the rules and regs required, especially as we were sort of rushed into it, and never intended it to be anything more than a hobby, never dreamt that anyone would want to buy our stuff anyway, but hey ho they do so it has sort of grown.

  9. #9
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    I take a lot of pics for my Facebook page on my phone too, Pat, handy beasties! Does yours have an app where you can give the picture a little oomph by upping the saturation? I use the Adobe Photoshop Express app on mine, it's freeeeeee! I usually increase the exposure and saturation on my shots, and crop to the item as far as possible before adding a nice border. It does well enough for most webby things.

  10. #10
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    Pat, it doesn't matter if you haven't given the site address out, if it's live, it can be found. The only way of avoiding that is to put it back into maintenance / offline mode while it's being worked on.

    And you are already set up to accept payments. You have paypal 'add to cart' buttons by each item, and a functioning paypal cart, with a named account for it to go to, which means that anyone can buy right now.

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