Handmade Beaded Jewelry | Bead Jewelry Ideas | Bead Jewelry Business

Today’s the beginning of fall, so if you haven’t started making your jewelry for the fall season then it’s time to get beading! I always think of the spring and fall as the best times for selling beaded items and bead jewelry at craft shows and flea markets. I find summer to be a little too warm to sit outside all day, but the mild and even cool weather of the fall especially seems to bring people together and make for a fun and festive atmosphere at most craft shows and fairs. I’ve been busy making some new pieces lately and I’ve found myself moving more and more into “fall themes” for my jewelry lately because I know a lot of that will sell. I always do much better at fall shows for some reason, and I think it might be because there are so many holidays and commemorative reasons to buy and wear jewelry in the upcoming couple of months.

If you aren’t planning for the fall then get going! Here are some of the “themed” holidays and events coming up and the type of beaded jewelry you may want to make for them.

Breast Cancer Awareness Beaded Jewelry: October is a time to commemorate the victims of and become more aware of breast cancer. You’ll see a lot of pink items for sale and pink ribbons around and I have actually had people ask me about making them pink jewelry to wear in October. I’ve written about a number of places that make and sell commemorative breast cancer bead jewelry in the past and I encourage you to donate a portion of your sales to an appropriate charity if you do make and sell beaded jewelry with pink beads for Breast Cancer Awareness during October.

Halloween Beaded Jewelry: Halloween beaded jewelry can be fun, but I’ve learned that most people are not looking for “elegant” beaded jewelry for Halloween. They’re looking for cheap Halloween beads and jewelry items that they can wear to a party or even use for decoration, but they’re generally not looking for Swarovski crystals and expensive sterling silver skull beads (though I’m sure there’s a market for that, too!)

Thanksgiving Jewelry: Thanksgiving jewelry is hard to gauge because some people are going to like the kitsch and want the turkey or little pilgrim beaded earrings and some people will want something a little more elegant for dinner with family and friends. I generally try to make things that use a lot of crystal and fall colors and don’t spend too much time making the Thanksgiving themed pieces. I tend to think of darker browns, reds and oranges as general fall and Thanksgiving colors, so I use a lot of those colored beads in pieces that I make for fall craft shows.

Handcrafted Christmas Jewelry: Christmas jewelry can take many forms, from beaded bracelets adorned with Christmas themed charms to beautifully elegant handcrafted jewelry in combining any shade of red or green. I’ve learned that going a little more high end with my Christmas jewelry is generally a good idea. I only use Sterling Silver for anything that is meant to be worn around Christmas or New Years because a lot of people are attending parties and visiting during this holiday and they want to look their best.

New Year’s Handcrafted Jewelry: My New Year’s beaded jewelry and my Christmas beaded jewelry all sort of run together. When I think of New Year’s Eve I think of bright silvers, clear Swarovski crystal and getting as much sparkle as I can out of my jewelry pieces. I like to use silvery snowflake pendants, little crystal charms and just about anything that gives off a little extra shine when the light hits it.

So if you aren’t making your jewelry for the holidays, then jump on it! Even if you don’t have time to make a lot of pieces for your upcoming fall craft shows you might want to consider making a few jewelry pieces just to pull people over to your table. Good luck and I hope you have a happy and profitable fall!

One of the ways to make your handcrafted jewelry or bead business more profitable is by instituting a degree of control and order over your beading inventory and customers so that you know exactly how much you’re spending in materials and you can price your jewelry appropriately. By keeping track of how much you spend on your beads you can use specially designed bead jewelry software to not only automatically figure out your cost-per-bead for you but you can also keep track of bead sales and always be aware of where you’re getting the cheapest beads from!

There are lots of jewelry business software packages on the market, but only a few of them are custom tailored to the inventory hassles and nature of making bead jewelry. Some are very expensive and have lots of features and some are very cheap but lack some basic features. Always try to see screenshots or, even better, a demonstration video to get a feel for how the software works ahead of time.

One of the most widely used and still very affordable options is Bead Manager Pro, which has all the features a small to medium home-based bead jewlery business should need at a very reasonable price.

Here are seven features you’ll definitely want to have in any software package you buy to handle your jewelry business:

Ability to Track Bead Inventory and Jewelry Supplies: This is the most important feature so that you can keep track of what you have, what you need and what you’re definitely out of. It takes a little bit to enter all your existing inventory at first, but then it’s a breeze and it saves you so much time in the long run when you find yourself wondering whether or not you still have a certain type of bead that you can’t locate at the moment.

Bead Jewelry Pricing Calculator: If you have all your bead inventory in the software then you should be able to list out all the beads you used in a certain beaded pieces and the software should give you an instant cost of goods and even make some suggestions on pricing. So if you used 30 Swarovski crystal bicone beads, 1 glass beaded pendant and 12 silver bali beads you would type those numbers into the software program and it would instantly tell you how much you spend on beads for that piece. No more guessing at pricing!

Ability to Store Photos of Your Beaded Jewelry Pieces: Any decent software will allow you to store photos of your beads and creations so that you can go back and reference them. It may even help in jewelry repair if a bead is lost and you need to see if you can find a certain type of bead without actually seeing the bead in person.

Customer Tracking: A lot of beginner bead jewelry artists track their beads and jewelry creations well, but don’t always track their customers. Tracking customers and being able to contact them from time to time is a great way to sell more jewelry to people who already like your style and beading ability.

Ability to Create Professional Invoices: Yes, at some craft shows you just can’t get electricity so you’re forced to use the little order pads, but ideally a professional piece of beaded jewelry should be accompanied with a professional invoice. It gives the buyer confidence in you as a business person and it serves as a receipt which can be kept and pulled out by the buyer if she wants to order more pieces from you in the future!

Export Data Ability: The ability to export data from your bead jewelry program into other programs like Microsoft Excel is essential to saving time and energy when tax season rolls around. And having numbers in Excel is a great way to then build sales charts and even track trends in your jewelry sales from one show to the next.

Affordability: If you’re just starting your beaded jewelry business then you probably don’t have hundreds of dollars to spend on a piece of software, even if it will end up saving you hours of work and maybe hundreds of dollars more in the future. Be wary of anything too cheap, but expect good value for the money you spend. From what I’ve seen you can get some great bead jewelry software for well under $200.

There you have it! Those are the mimimal things you should be looking for when you go shopping for Bead Jewelry Software to help run your business. The more features, the better!

In addition to this blog about making bead jewelry I decide to start experimenting with other ways to spread the word about how easy it is to make jewelry with a little time, some beads and a little practice. I have started making some specialized “Squidoo” lenses (or pages) for different beading and jewelry topics.

Not sure what a Squidoo page is? It’s a site that allows you to set up your own web page very quickly and without knowing any HTML at all! It’s just drag and drop and you can build a page dedicated to any topic you like best. Want to see some? Check out the links below!

Bead Jewelry Page - Here’s my first page. It has some general bead jewelry information and links, but it also automatically gets some useful information from other sites as well, so it’s worth checking back from time to time to see new sales, new news items and even some online video beading tutorials.

Jewelry TV Page - I don’t watch much TV, but when I do I always end up checking out the Jewelry Television channel just to see if they have anything good or not. Sometimes the jewelry they sell is pretty ugly in my opinion, but sometimes it’s absolutely gorgeous! And, yes, they have plenty of beaded jewelry as well. This Squidoo page about Jewelry TV gives you their top sale items for the hour, lists some links to various cool pages on their website and even offers some archival bead jewelry videos.

Pandora Beads Page - I am still pretty fascinated with Pandora beads and how cool they are. They pretty much encapsulate everything I really love about beautiful beads: they’re small and intricate and they’re like little pieces of shiny art that can be easily combined with other beads to make something really amazing! This page automatically finds deals on Pandora Beads from eBay and it allows you to vote on and buy Pandora beads from Amazon! There are even some accessories and videos here as well!

Swarovski Crystal Beads Page - This is a short page that is dedicated to another of my favorite types of beads: Swarovski crystal beads! I use them sparingly when I’m making my own bead jewelry because I think they have more of an impact when they are displayed around other beads. This Squidoo page also has some deals and tips listed on how to get cheap Swarovski crystal beads, some videos and even a little bit of information about crystal beads.

If you have a Squidoo page then drop me a line and we can exchange comments/links on Squidoo! If you want to see a pro at Squidoo, then check out the Beading Gem’s “Gemstone Place Names” Squidoo lens!

As you can see, a Squidoo page is basically just a page that is dedicated to ONE topic. I think I need to work on making my beaded jewelry pages a little more specific to one small idea instead of one large idea. I could make some Squidoo lenses about how to make different beading projects like maybe have one page explain how to make a beaded bracelet and another page have instructions on how to make a beaded necklace.

Making a Squidoo page might also be a great way to start a bead jewelry blog if you just want to experiment with the idea and you’re not sure if you want to start a whole beading website yet!