I’m often asked when I started beading. The answer is always “it depends on how you count it.” When I was very young, I was a Camp Fire Girl, and we were given colorful wooden beads to sew onto our vests as rewards for completed tasks. Then, when I was in college, a friend showed me how to string seed beads and make the wrapped wire loop. That knowledge spawned a little earring business where I sold my earrings on consignment in the college bookstore. That business provided a little spending money for me until one day when I spent ALL my proceeds and didn’t have enough to buy more supplies to make more earrings. I was instantly out of business. It was my first real lesson in business. There is an old adage of farmers “don’t eat the seed corn.” Well, that’s what I did. I didn’t touch beads again until more than 30 years later.
During the interim, my mother had retired from a lifetime of teaching school and taken up gemstone faceting. I would frequently take her to gem and mineral shows so she could buy rough material, and I was facinated by the gemstones. In those experiences, I began to learn a little bit of the lingo. Mom graduated to silver smithing and lapidary work, and then to teaching those subjects at her senior center. She did that for about 20 years, then quit and finally passed on. She left me all her hand tools that she had not sold, and as I was looking at them one day I wondered what they all did and what I was going to do with them. I thought, well, I don’t know what all these tools are for, but I do know how to make a necklace. So, if I get started with jewelry making I’ll eventually learn what they are and whether they should be kept or not. So, I made a liquid silver necklace (100 strands) and sold it on Ebay for $175.00. “Woohoo! I can do this!” I thought. That success gave me the confidence to start my own web site.
I figured I’d sell my jewelry online, so hubby and I took a buying trip to Tucson. (If you’ve never been to the bead shows in Tucson at the end of January and beginning of February, you have missed quite an event!) I maxed out a credit card and spent all my savings and came home with quite a few beads. As I was putting some finished jewelry on the web site, I thought, “hey, why not put the beads out there too?” It wasn’t long before I discovered that the beads were selling better than the jewelry. So, I found myself in the bead business. I was working a full time job with a serious commute time for the first year. It took 1 hour to get to work, and another hour to get onto the military base where my job was (after 9-11.) Then I would put in a 10 hour day and drive another hour back home. Then, I’d fill my web orders and work on the web sitein the evening and week-ends. Aftera year, I had to make a choice – keep my day job or keep the web business. I chose the web business.
I worked out of my home, selling beads online for several years, then, when the beads started to take over every available space in the house, moved into a shop in Albuquerque’s Old Town historic district. I’ve been doing that now for 4 years. My business is still in the fledgling stage, so I don’t have any employees. All available money goes to paying down the debt I’ve incurred buying the inventory that I now have, and consequently I work 7 days a week with only occasional help from hubby. I have to admit, I’m tired of no days off, but I do see the light at the end of the tunnel someday.
Most of my time is spent packaging beads, doing accounting, filling web orders, and waiting on customers in the shop. However, once in a while I have time to be creative. That’s really the best part of the business. I like to combine different types of beads, such as glass with gemstones or pearls. I truly believe every bead can be a part of a beautiful design given the right companions. My goal is to continue to expand my skills and to learn new techniques as well as to make my little bead business all it can be.
Sun Country Gems
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