Excited! Made a Video!

Well it’s a slideshow, but I’m pleased with it. It shows my new silver leaf range. I can’t really take videos at the moment to do any ‘how to’ clips, but this is the next best thing. The lovely Al (or Big Al to most people) wrote the music, as I presume you can’t use anything original. I’ve added a youtube video bar on the side (—–> )
Yeah – ok, I know it’s a bit crap, but – it’s a start!

Introducing the new Brocade Range

Ta Dah!!!!

I have finally uploaded my new range of Silver Brocade. Very difficult to choose a name as I loved all the ideas; Brocade, Damask, Jacquard etc etc. You know those gorgeous black and white satin waistcoats some men wear at weddings, this design conjurs up the same elegant feel. The background is a deep sumptuous rich charcoal, and the silver is hammered and highly polished, the contrast is lovely. I am completely besotted with it!
I showed it to a gorgeous little shop in a local town and they want to showcase the entire range!
So I know what I’ll be doing this weekend.

Time on the net is expensive

The rub! As I’ve said in earlier posts the cost of silver has flown through the roof this last year. It’s been said it has risen 270%. So you can imagine, what was priced up last year has no resemblance on this years prices.

At the moment I have a project on to increase ranges. I did some searching round and found a brilliant spreadsheet for jewellers, (Chris Parry’s Famous Pricing Sheet) its quite popular in the jewelling community, but oh my gosh, it opens your eyes. I used to have a formula that I had gotten elsewhere, however, this particular spreadsheet takes into account a trillion other things which had been forgotten. The hardest one for me was the time aspect. You need to calculate how much time you acutally spend making and how much time on admin etc as of course these aren’t accounted for in the making process. Which got me to thinking. How much time do I spend on the net. And it woke me up with jolt. Nearly 75% of my ‘jewllery’ time is spent on the net, photos, descriptions, uploading etc. Now that is all good time, you can’t get round it, but what of all the other time? I realised that I am so attention challenged that I am wasting so so much time, checking on facebook to see what’s going on, answering comments, then going off and looking at other posts (time lost). Go to Etsy forums, check back on posts I’ve posted in, catch up, respond (time lost). Have a quick check in the activity feed, go off looking at what has been hearted, who has been added, who has added me to their circle (time wasted). Check in on twitter – go through and look at posts regarding who knows what (time lost). Website… let’s tweak that, and it just goes on and on and on.
So, I have done an experiement with myself this week. I write a list of the things I need to do, sit at the computer and tick them off as I go through, and there is a time limit. Gosh it works. I have cut my time right down and am actually getting stuff done.
What I am starting to think, is that a lot of these sights, their popularity in google ranking is based on clicks, and the more we click through all the forums and news feeds, the more clicks they are getting, so I am just selling someone elses idea when really I want to sell my own. Anyone else got any good ideas for controlling this dreadful addiction?