Alan Goldin, Hi Alan, have been enjoying all the posts from everyone
on how easy it is to actually make money from jewellery.
I make $0 from jewellery so far and i work on it every Sunday for 8 hours
I am the same as you. Have made no money as yet. Finished a 3 year
degree at college in jewellery and ended up with a ton of debt and
took a job in I guess what is England’s equivalent of Rio, working
behind the counter. Paid very little money so I couldn’t afford the
supplies to get started with my jewellery collection, whilst I was
constantly seeing people coming in the shop with jewellery that was
obviously selling, but was no better than anything I could make.
Decided that I had to do something about it and after 2 long years i
decided to change career and be a legal secretary as the money is
better. One year on and I have been lucky enough to get a Saturday
job with a very experienced bench jeweller who is happy for me to
use his equipment and give me advice.
I am still working full time as a legal secretary and am now at the
same stage as you of sending pictures of my work to galleries. I
hope to do this within the next two weeks and I’m keeping my fingers
crossed.
You seem negative about what your response will be from all the
galleris you have sent your work to. Don’t be. I checked out your
website and I think your designs are fabulous. You just need to
find the right gallery for your particular style. Please don’t
start chucking diamonds, reticulation etc at them! I am having that
problem at the moment, as I sell only through the shop of the guy I
work for on a Saturday and my stuff doesn’t really fit well with his
market, but in other galleries I am confident (well, hopeful anyway,
that it will do better) I have sold a couple of pieces, but have
spent much more money on actually making the initial collection.
Anyway after this rather babbling post, I wanted to say that you
don’t need to pay for a professional photographer. You work in
graphic design so i imagine you have access to digital cameras etc.
I did my own photography much through a trial and error process, but
it looks pretty good now. Just used a good digital camera, built a
mini-studio kind of box thing (vague description, sorry) and used
daylight bulbs, then ran the images through Photoshop (which i just
taught myself to use with much stress, not good at computers
really!). Came out really well. If you want any more info on
photographing jewellery there’s loads in the Orchid archive. It’s
where I got most of my I love this site!
So, goodbye and don’t give up!
Anya, from freezing cold London