Jewelry & Beading

Permission to Bead

by Tammy Powley on October 18th, 2006

After receiving my zillionth email about making money selling jewelry, it occurred to me how sad this is. Now, trust me. I know that many jewelry designers have the same experience I did. They start making jewlery for fun, and then people start asking them to buy it. Next thing you know, you are in business.

However, after that, what happens? Well, for me, much of the “fun” turned into “how do I make money doing this?”

Again, nothing necessarily wrong with that, but what too often gets lost is your original impetus for making jewelry in the first place. 

I’ll give you an analogy of sorts: As a young girl, I loved to read. I was a voracious reader. Much of it was crap, not the high-brow literature I wish I had been reading, but the whole experience is why I turned to writing. I wanted to write stories too. So, I did. I wrote stories, plays, and poems and eventually I went to college and wrote stories and poems there.

Finally, I graduated, and I kid you not, while in an interview for a techincal writing job, the guy who would become my future boss said, “You know. We don’t write stories here.”

Well, duh, I did know that, but it just shows me now a warning sign popping up even then. So, I was hired and I started writing manuals for the space shuttle at Kennedy Space Center, and it was a good job. Heck, after working as a bank teller and waiting tables, the money was fabulous. And, my parents were relieved that I finally had “a real job.”

Eventually, my technical writing lead me to write about jewelry, and here I am a freelance writer, writing about jewelry, and I’m actually doing okay, making some decent money, not 6 figures, but about two thirds of my income comes from my writing so that’s not too shabby.

But, about a year ago, I started writing what is probably my sixth attempt at a novel. On and off, I write it when I can, when the mood hits me. A few months ago, my school work was light, so I went at it again, and the old “you’re not going to make money at this,” just like with jewelry, started. I kept thinking I should work on one of my web sites or write a book proposal, and here I was wasting time on a novel! Shame on me!

And, now, I’m finally getting to my point - the real shame is that we have to feel like we don’t have permission to just do what we love to do because we love doing it.

So, today, I’m giving you permission to just bead, bend wire, hammer metal, whatever it is you like to do to make jewelry.

You don’t have to make a necklace with the idea of selling, and you don’t have to worry about the fact that you have X-number of beaded necklaces already. Just bead, enjoy, play, because I really think it’s important to remember why we started all of this in the first place.

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POSTED IN: General Jewelry Musings, Jewelry Design Careers