Ignorance is............

Can be bliss, but in this case it's losing money! I finally made myself sit down the other night and do a comparison of glass prices. I knew where sterling silver had been going. It was hard to miss that. But I hadn't really been paying attention to the rising cost of glass. I bought when I needed it, tried to get things on sale when ever possible, but recently a couple different sources referenced the rising price of pink glass. This caused me to actually sit down and look at what I had paid for these colors in the past. Let me just say I about fell over! One glass, which thankfully I haven't used a lot, but I do like and would like to use in the future has gone from $30.00 a pound to $85.00 a pound!

If you buy glass, you'll know that the expensive, silver laden glass can run between $85.00-100.00 per pound. The glass that just went up to $85.00 is just a soft pink, semi-opaque color, that doesn't do anything special!  Needless to say, in the future, if it is pink, it's going to be priced a wee bit higher than other beads. I also just ordered more sterling silver tubing for coring my Pandora style beads and that is about 50% more than it was a year ago. I have been making more sets of beads unlined and they seem to be getting a good response. I am still going to core some of the beads, but may just stick to doing so on larger focal's and single beads.

I have been listing beads at least once a week in my Etsy shop, some times twice. I think I have found a pretty good rhythm that works for me and allows me the time to fit in other things and doesn't wear me out. I have decided to stop previewing my beads on Facebook. I am trying to fine tune things down to only doing that which is a profitable use of my time. While I really do enjoy giving my Facebook customers the opportunity to see things in advance, this was only creating twice the work for me, so I need to cut out what isn't helping me. I'd rather have more time to do the creative part of this endeavor, and be more efficient with the necessary,  but much less fun parts like photos, editing and listing!

I am working on getting more jewelry pieces listed consistently. This seems to be the thorn in my side right now! For some reason, I just can't seem to get all my ducks in a row on this one for more than a week or two at a time! I will just keep trying. Thanks for stopping by and listening to me ramble!

Waiting forThe Man...

Nope, Not Santa yet, I am waiting for the "Man In Brown", Every girls boyfriend that brings her gifts, the UPS Man. I am supposed to get my kiln today and can't wait! I just love it when the UPS Man or the Fed Ex Guy arrives at my door. Even if you know you've ordered something, it still like a gift has arrived and it's so much fun to open your box and unpack all of your goodies! It sad someday's when he drives right by without even so much as a wave... Hey, I thought we had a good thing going? Why are you being so distant? Then comes that ring of the doorbell and knock, they always do both, if their any good! And once again my hope in the Man in Brown has been renewed. I have to say though, that Fed Ex guy has been pretty frequent as well lately, I wonder if Mr. Brown will get jealous?

I have a bunch of new glass coming in the next week or so, as well as some new presses. I have several jars of frit I have yet to get a chance to play with and several new tutorials that I am dying to try out. I have finally found most of the unusual and unique glass and such that the tutorials call for, so hopefully I can get to working on those soon.

It'll be nice to see Santa later this week, but for now... I am waiting for Mr. Brown!