Marquise Series:  Pendant 1

One of the jewelry groups on Facebook is currently running a design contest to “overcome the economic crisis”.  The idea is to use cheaper materials to reduce the price point of the finished piece.  The problem I see with the contest is that the value of the physical effort involved is completely discounted.  The cost of the labour stays the same regardless of the materials used.

The only way reduce the cost of the labour is to simplify the designs so that they take less time to make.

There are two challenges to making simple designs:  one is to make them well, because the simpler the design, the more important the finishing becomes; the other is coming up with an original concept, something that will appeal to the customer without looking like the same old same old that someone else has produced.

I think the latter is the harder of the two to overcome.

This was the background I was thinking about while making this pendant.  The goal was to produce a nice, quick-to-make design, that could become part of my bread-and-butter line for next year.  As much as I like making the complex one-of-a-kind pieces, most of my sales fall in the in $20-$150 price range.

Without the neck rope, the pendant on its own would fall easily in the lower end of that range.

It’s been my experience that chains are uneconomic for me to make from scratch, and that was proven true again with this piece.  The labour involved in making the neck rope bumps the price up substantially, and the change to the cheaper material (polymer cord) has a huge impact on the perceived value.  I end up with a piece that is not sellable at the price I need to sell it at to recoup my costs and actually pay myself.

It’s perverse.  It’s also why I don’t generally use “cheap” materials.  I want you to feel good about what you’re buying from me, so I make high quality jewellery, with high quality materials.  It’s worth every cent.

Marquise Series:  Bracelet 2

The next step in developing the Marquise Series was to add some form of embellishment, like a spiral.  To give this bracelet a bit of visual interest, I decided to alternate the links in mirror image.  They remind me of fish, and a bit like the stylized birds from the Partridge Family tv show.

I debated about using solder to join the spiral to the frame, and then decided that I wouldn’t save enough time doing that to make any difference in price of the finished piece.

Marquise Series:  Earrings 1

The next logical step from the Bracelet I did for YOJ09-43 was to make a pair of earrings.  I liked the idea of making the earwire in the same shape as the link – it gives the earring a chain-like look.

Marquise Series:  Bracelet 1

I’m doing a serious push to get caught up on my YOJ projects before the end of the year.  It’s sort of cheating, because I’m working on a bunch of things all at once, and posting it all in a very short time frame, but so be it.

The other week I was working on my Secret Santa project for this year, and it inspired me to explore some other ideas.  (I can’t post the SS photo until after Christmas, so it will be a few days yet.)

This week, I started working on what has become a new series of pieces,  all using a marquise shape as the starting point.

This is the first bracelet from the series, which is just a simple marquise link.  This is such a basic shape to make that I can’t imagine it not having been done elsewhere.  It’s a good start point to develop other designs though.