How About a Jewelry Making Party

Image via WikipediaA great way to sell jewelry is to host a jewelry making party where you create custom-made jewelry for your clients right at the party. Here are some tips to make a successful jewelry making party.

• Organize all your tools, beads and other components in a good portable tool box. This way, you can save yourself the trouble of finding the right tools and components you need while you work, and speed up the process of making jewelry.
• Allow yourself at least 2 weeks to prepare before your jewelry making party. You may want to do stock inventory to make sure you get everything you need.
• Talk to the party hostess to make sure you have arranged a table, good lighting, and a trashcan.
• Protect the table with a tablecloth or bead cloth.
• Always bring along a supply of business cards and your appointment book. Pass out business cards to everyone at the party so they will be able to contact you when they want to buy more jewelry or schedule their own jewelry making party.
• Bring along some of your favorite best-selling designs, latest fashion magazines with jewelry photos, or you can make a scrapbook of all your favorite jewelry designs, so you can use them as your base designs to customize for clients.
• For custom orders, make up an order form using a word processing software in your computer ahead of time and bring several printed copies to the party. Get the client's name and contact information, write a description of the custom jewelry order, and indicate the price and delivery time.
• Before a jewelry making party, do the work up front to make sure you have recorded the cost of each bead and component, and determined a fair price to charge. You may also simply calculate a flat rate for basic findings and components, and then add the price of the beads.
• It is really important that you do this homework before the party because you won't have time once you are there, and it is all too easy to want to please someone and just give them the beads without thinking about your costs. After all, you don't want a loss instead of a profit by giving away genuine beads for the same price as your less expensive glass beads.
• If you are using bead boxes with bins, use a piece of tape and write the bead/component price on some tape and stick it inside each compartment. Bring along a calculator and pad of paper to your jewelry making party so you can write up the cost of the jewelry components just to make sure you know what to charge.