Work in Progress - Creative Chaos

My desk is an absolute state right now and this extends throughout our entire apartment as well. The reason (and the answer to the question I posted on my facebook page) is that I've been preparing for Craft Shows. I'll have a post up later in the week showing my (hopefully) finished booth display!

Oh and don't worry, I haven't forgotten I promised you an explanation for my last 'Work in Progress' post. Everything has taken a backseat to preparing for the craft shows but as soon as I get my displays finished and extra jewelry made I will have that post up for you too!

The mess on my workbench

In this snapshot you can see... everything! I have tools all over the place, some freshly soldered stud earrings ready to tumble, handmade copper components ready to be wire-wrapped and/or attached to other things and a whole pile of components just out the tumbler and waiting to be fished out of the pile of steel shot.

Also, in the top left corner, you can see my current attempts to accurately price my items. I've started making notecards for each item telling me how long each takes to make and exactly how many of each component they need as well as how long to cut each piece of wire. I'm working on this side by side with increasing my inventory ready for the craft shows because I can time how long it takes to make each item as I go.

Sometimes 'old school' is just easier

My supplies listed alongside their costs

 A few months ago I spent many hours trying to work out how to set up an Access database to organise my supplies and finances exactly how I wanted them. At the same time I spent additional hours researching bookkeeping software and all the options available.


Eventually I was forced to conclude that to get bookkeeping software that would do what I wanted would mean spending more money (more than $0) than I wanted to. I also concluded that Access either didn't do what I wanted or I didn't have the knowledge to get it to do what I wanted.

I don't think that my requirements were radically different from those of any other crafter:
Effectively I wanted 3 lists - A) the supplies I purchase regularly and their costs B) the materials needed for each item to calculate total cost to make C) my purchases and sales for in and outgoing money.

Keeping track of how much it costs me
to make each item

Easy so far. However, when I listed a supply in list B (such as a clasp) I wanted list B to pull the data on price from list A so I didn't have to look it up myself each time. This is the part that I just couldn't get Access to do. In bookkeeping software its all about the Bill of Materials but unfortunately, the free versions of all the decent programs I found did not include this feature.

So what did I do? After feeling like I had wasted hours and hours of my life I decided to forget all about modern technology and go old school. I've always preferred tangible items anyway, you won't catch me getting out my phone to write a shopping list. So I bought a stack of notecards and now, when I need to price up a new item I just made or lookup how much wire to cut for my latest order, I can easily grab the relevant cards.

If you were actually reading my woes above you will probably be saying 'but you still have to manually look up the cost of each supply'. That is true but I find it so much easier and somehow more enjoyable to do that on a notecard rather than a screen.

My new notecard box with handmade dividers

Are you all about electronic gadgets or do you prefer a pen and paper, like me?

Bootcamp Week 6

Well I'm back from a lovely break :) If you want to read more about what we got up to it will be described in detail on my personal blog at secretsofanescapist.blogspot.com in the next few days, alongside some pictures from the trip.

I realise I promised you an article on photography but shortly after making that promise the weather turned and then I went away so I haven't yet had a good opportunity to take any new pictures.

Time to continue scrabbling to catch up on my bootcamp posts! This week's task list looks like this:

Revisit your prices

Check out this reading list

Connect with your buddy

OK task 1 is another very timely task for me. My pricing at the moment comes from the following approach:
1. Pick a price that seems reasonable and in-line with other sellers on Etsy
2. Calculate the cost of the materials in the item and the packaging
3. Check that the price I picked is more than the price I calculated in step 2, if it isn't increase it a bit.

It is something I have had in the back of my mind to work on for a long time now and I have already read several articles providing advice on how to go about doing just that.

Danielle suggests this formula for calculating prices so I'm going to take a couple of my pieces and use the formula to see how my current prices match up:

Cost Price (Labor + Materials Cost) x 2 = Your Wholesale Price

Wholesale Price x 2 = Retail Price

These earrings are currently priced at  $12 plus shipping

Material cost:
6 inches 18ga copper wire @ $0.02/inch = $0.12
2 inches 24ga copper wire @ $0.01/inch = $0.02
2 copper earwires              @ $0.26        = $0.52


Labour cost:
This is the part I currently ignore. These earrings are quite simple to make so I reckon they take about 5 minutes. According to wikipedia the minimum wage in San Francisco is currently $9.79/hour. For the sake of making things easy to calculate I'm going to use $12/hour as my "wage" which would make the labour cost of this item $2.


Final Costs:
Adding it all up gives a cost price of $2.68
Using the formula that would make the wholesale price $5.36
And the retail price $10.72

So this piece isn't far off being priced according to the formula, although Danielle does recommend being generous with the salary, possibly more so than I was. Let's take a look at a much less simple piece that uses more expensive materials.

This is a new piece as yet unlisted. I would probably price it around $25

Material cost:

6 inches 18ga copper wire     @ $0.02/inch = $0.12

20 inches 24ga sea foam wire @ $0.01/inch = $0.20

18 inches copper chain           @ $0.14/inch = $2.52

Copper lobster clasp              @ $0.41        = $0.41

2 copper jumprings                @ $0.03        = $0.06

Labour cost:

This one takes substantially longer to make; the pieces have to be shaped and hammered and then wrapped together with the coloured wire. I made a new piece like this and timed it - it took 30 minutes. Using the same hourly wage this gives a labour cost of $6

Final Costs:

Adding it all up gives a cost price of $9.31

Using the formula that would make the wholesale price $18.62

And the retail price $37.24

This is quite a bit higher than I would have priced it and I'm not sure how people would feel about paying that much. If you read Danielle's article she goes on to discuss finding the right buyers and marketing to people who value handmade items but I think thats a story for another blog post. I have quite a lot of items sitting waiting to be photographed and I will be much more rigorous about calculating their cost when the time comes.

We haven't even looked at task 2 yet but I think this post is long enough. Most of the articles on the reading list are at least interesting so check them out at your leisure if that appeals to you :) A couple have given me ideas for future posts so look out for them here...