Exciting News!
Ok, this is where I need to reveal a little more about myself. After I left my job as a commercial interior designer to be a SAHM, I got a little creatively frustrated. I started making jewelry as a hobby. I would go to the bead store on the weekend as my escape while hubby stayed home with our daughter. My jewelry business grew with baby steps, finally I really wanted to get serious and sell directly to retail stores. I literally hit the pavement with samples in hand. Slowly I was able to gain accounts. But the retail market is finicky and I would gain an account and I would lose one due to a store closing or they just wanted to try new vendors. Some of my best accounts only carried my jewelry for a year and yet they sold huge volumes! I had an offer from someone who wanted to represent me nationally. They were starting out in the sellers representative business and I think they wanted to base their business on me. My gut instinct told me this wasn't a good deal, they were not concerned about my production issues(just me) either. Later I found out they failed miserably and possibly ruined the reputations of their sellers. I was getting to a point where I loved designing the jewelry, just not making the quantities of a single design to meet the orders. I also love so many other artistic mediums and I was actually losing interest in beads. I slowly scaled back my business. It was hard to leave the house for a while, everyone I saw wanted to see my new designs. I turned my attention to wet clay. I have worked with it for years just always as a hobby. I sold a few pieces occasionally but it was only to extremely persistent buyers. I kept jewelry on the back burner for a while still dabbling now and then. I continued to subscribe to bead and jewelry magazines. Lately, I noticed that Beadstyle magazine was looking for submissions. I entered one and I didn't make it in but they published it on their web site. Undaunted I tried again. This time I made it as a finalist! I will be published in the July 09 issue of Beadstyle magazine.
