What better way to learn about the business of beads than to hear it straight from those who have gone ahead? Recently I caught up with glass bead artist Jennifer Geldard and chatted about the business side of beads.
Jennifer has been one of my inspirations from the day I first saw her beads. Her free-form, always-changing, willing-to-risk style never ceases to captivate my imagination. She’s also a great teacher and encourager. Here’s what she has to say about the business side of beads and making it as a bead artist.
How long have you been making and selling beads?
I’ve been making beads since 1994, but only began selling in 2000. I spent a long time learning before I felt my work was good enough to sell.
How many hours a day/week do you work? How much time is spent on creating and how much on the business side?
I usually work a bit every day, but that includes internet sales, shipping, teaching and self-promotion. I’m on the torch about 4-5 days per week if possible.
Where have you sold beads in the past and where do you sell them currently?
At the moment, the only show I do is the ISGB Gathering Bazaar, though I’m working on trying to do more. Otherwise, I sell primarily on eBay under id glassgirl3 and on my website www.glassgirl.com.
I was selling on Etsy for a while, but it wasn’t doing as well for me, and
I found it easier to streamline my sales to just the two sites. My website is the easiest, but I need EBay to bring in new customers.
How long would you say it took before you had a following or a more steady stream of buyers?
It took a good year selling on eBay before I established myself in any real way.
Other than selling your beads, do you supplement bead making income in other ways?
I teach quite a bit… and that has made a huge difference in my income, as it is something I can count on. Bead sales fluctuate, but teaching is a solid paycheck, and I enjoy the traveling and the ability to get out of my studio once in a while.
I also think that self-promotion is really important. There are a lot of ways to do it that don’t involve obvious salesman-style tactics. Just get out there… participate in online communities… don’t just log on to push your work. Besides the visibility, you’ve got a wonderful opportunity to connect with other artists, form friendships, and help each other grow. I can’t stress enough what my online community has done for me both on a professional and personal level.
How has the business of making and selling beads changed for you since the time you started?
The introduction of imported beads and the sheer number of new beadmakers out there have increased so much that making basic beads is no longer an option for me.
And that has been nothing but a positive development.
Not only is the public more aware of handcrafted glass beads, but I am forced to try and stay ahead of the pack and keep my work fresh and innovative.
If there was one thing that you could change if you knew then what you know now, what would it be?
I guess I would have gotten serious about my work a lot sooner. I wish I had known that I could make a decent living doing what I love.
What piece of business advice would you give to someone just starting out?
Do what you love… don’t make beads that you think other people want. The only way you’re going to stand out is by creating unique work. Explore and play whenever you can, and don’t expect to be an instant success. If you’re consumed with making money right away, you’ll only be disappointed. Don’t look for shortcuts… take the time to know your materials, and Practice…practice..practice!!!
As I have been writing the posts on how to build a web site and how to build a mailing list and many other marketing-related posts I always want to start off with the obvious:
Above all, make the best product possible.
While it might seem obvious, not everyone takes this to heart and that is fine. There are ‘turn and burn’ bead makers that create simple designs and mass produce and that is ok. That is their business. However, it keeps occuring to me that if you want to be successful and continue to move up in your skill, customer base and reputation the first thing you must focus on is good product. I even suggest to production bead makers making simple beads that they also make the best product that they can, within their scope.
You can have a killer web site, great marketing skills and lots of friends at the shows you go to but the bottom line is, the better your product, the better your marketing will work and the easier it will be.
So what does ‘good product’ mean? It means different things in different media and even within different media there is debate about what constitutes a good product. For example, chill marks in glass and finger prints in polymer. Some might not be as bothered by their existence and may even use them as a design element. Others will faint at the thought and profess poor craftsmanship.
I would venture to say that we all know good craftsmanship when we see it but some pieces that I see make me wonder. So, yes, it is subjective and I will leave it to each craftsperson to decide for themselves. I only urge that you always strive for better than you are currently creating; especially if you want to make a living at art. Pushing yourself is how you will grow. It is how your work will grow.
On the other hand, don’t get down on yourself if you aren’t where you want to be. Perfection never arrives and you must give yourself time to progress. Know that you are doing your best and releasing the best work that you can at the moment.
There are two areas where everyone can do well, and have nothing to do with artistic ability:
- Finishing. Whatever your media, there is finishing to be done. Whether it be cleaning bead holes, fine sanding, polishing, shaping, etc., do it well and give it as much attention, if not more, than the actual designing. I was once taught that the back of a piece should look as nice as the front. It is the last thing we want to do when a piece is otherwise finished but it makes a big difference.
- Structural Integrity. Everything you create should be as safe and sturdy as possible. Do not skimp on materials if it compromises safety or durability. If a layer of something needs to be thicker, make it thicker. If glass needs to be annealed, anneal it. If something is better off sealed, seal it. Etc. You know where you are skimping…stop it. If you are trying to save money, think about how much it will cost you when someone returns an item damaged.
Commit to those two things, because you can, and work towards the others right from using the best materials you can up through designing your pieces to inspecting what leaves your studio.
This can be a controversial topic. What about new people? How does one support their hobby/art if they don’t sell everything they make? Who is anyone to tell anyone else how/what they should create and/or the quality of it?
What do you think? Get it going by leaving a comment below!
Table of contents for You Can Learn to be Creative
- Methodical Creativity: You can learn to be creative by making more work.
While at the International Society of Glass Beadmaker’s Convention (ISGB Gathering), Milon Townsend addressed attendees with a talk on creativity. While there are many ways to approach creativity, I thoroughly enjoyed his talk as he stated that creativity was a skill; that if creativity weren’t a skill it would mean that you are born with it.
I often think in terms of books. That is, I get an idea and think, “I want to write a book about that some day.” Thinking that way, while it might not ever yield a book, keeps me gathering information on the subject. I also come up with titles for these would-be books. The one I’m leading up to here is titled “Methodical Creativity” and has some concepts similar to what Milon spoke about in his presentation.
I’ve tried to talk to people about this concept and often got blank stares. I was beginning to think that creativity was unique and isolated from person to person. While it is a very personal process, I am finding that I am not alone, and that creativity can be explained, taught and learned…in a methodical way.
Books that I have read about creativity talk about it in a different way…a more ethereal way. ‘My way’ is more methodical yet still freeform. It is not something that one is born with, it is something that one can learn if they are willing to work on it. One principle is:
Bridging: Make lots of work until something new presents itself to you.
Yes, presents itself to you. While you might start in a particular direction, be open to what comes into your reality and follow the process. If you are always set on a strict, linear design process and are unwilling to stray from it, you will miss opportunities around you. That doesn’t mean that you don’t have design time or production work.
Making lots of work (even production work) yields better creativity by freeing your mind. If you are doing the same thing over and over your brain becomes less involved in concentration-type activity and opens to that other place where new ideas come from. The whole right-brain/left-brain thing. In this repetitive state, creative thoughts will present themselves to you. Be sure to have a pad and paper around at all times. (Another of Milon’s tips, and one that I bet a lot of us already practice). If you have the time, try the technique that has come into your awareness right then and there to give it more permanence in your consciousness. If you like it, incorporate it and make lots more with that new technique added and until yet another new idea presents itself. I call this BRIDGING. Before you know it, that simple bead that you started out practicing on will bridge itself right into a new style that is all yours.
Increased Efficiency and better quality of work.
Not only does making a lot of work help you be in a place where you can allow new ideas to emerge, but it also hones your technique. The old, ‘practice, practice, practice’ that you hear so much about. The great thing about it is that you can be working one technique over and over and over and when you’re done, you find that you are now more proficient in another area as well.
New ideas presenting themselves to you while repeating processes, coupled with increasingly refined skills and technique is part of what I call “Methodical Creativity.” It happens over time. Sometimes gradually, sometimes in great leaps. But if you follow the method, rest assured that it will happen.
I can hear some of you in the back grumbling, ‘Making lots of work will waste materials. It will cost money. It will waste my time.’ You are absolutely right and that is what I would call ’suffering for your art.’
Unless you have orders to fill that you can use as your practice time, or the work that rolls off of your fingers is immediately saleable, doing lots of work will take time and money/materials. But in the end, it will set you apart from others and you will get better at your craft more rapidly.
Set aside practice time.
It doesn’t have to be at a scheduled time but a time committment for a few hours a week to ‘power create’ and just try ideas one after another on a small scale. Don’t worry about whether you are wasting materials or time. Use a similar but less expensive medium or scrap pieces. Just work and explore.
Another thing that Milon talked about was limitations or necessity forcing us to be creative. One of my first good designs (my Monet beads) came from not wanting to waste materials while experimenting. I wanted to learn about layering colors but I didn’t want to use my ‘good’ materials for something that could really turn out awful and really was just a study. I took pieces of glass rods that I bought from other glass workers for a fraction of the retail glass price (some was even donated because it is considered scrap) and, on a day when I wanted brainless work, I welded them together in similar color families until I had regular size rods of varying color. I used those rods, exactly as they were to build a bead…one color being applied right on top of another.
Not only did I learn a lot about layering color, which was my initial goal, I was turned in another direction that led me to explore using the bubbles that were formed from where the welds were on the rod (often considered poor technique) and actually exploiting that imperfection to my advantage. It also led me to work more with enamels in a new way in order to give more depth to the layers of colors.
I have also had days where I spent my handful of experimentation hours only to yield garbage. You will too, but when you finally get to that design that you love, you will have forgotten all about the struggle and it would have been worth it.
What do you think? Do you work this way? Leave me a comment and share your own process of try this one and let me know how it goes.
