Sunglasses

I used to love mirrored sunglasses in my youth, mainly to look at 'talent' unobserved! Nowdays I prefer avaitor style sunglasses.

The great weather in the UK at the moment reminded me that I do not stock sunglasses in the shop as yet, seasonal items should be bought a few months ahead of time so you can get them listed before anyone needs them! I'm so behind I'll be stocking Christmas items on the 20th december!

I've had a look at some of the wholesale sites and found some really good avaitor sunglasses so hopefully will be listing these in the next week or so.....just when it starts raining again!

Some of the stock just purchased comes from overseas, with the volcano erruption and the 'planes grounded over the last week these items have been delayed so no new items listed this week.

Favorite piece of jewellery today.....Deer pendant necklace

Brilliant pictures!

I've been going through the pictures on the shop and have realised that the white background is so much better than the black! Now I have to re-photo all the items with the black background.....this may take some time!

Many of the guides on 'how to set up your own online business' say to purchase the best camera you can get, this is not always possible though as starting up has enough costs involved, purchasing stock, advertising costs, etc, so unless you have pots of cash, a £300 camera to take pictures of your stock may end up with having no cash left to buy stock!

A good way around this is to use your mobile phone camera to start with until you have made enough profit to purchase a camera just for business use. Most new mobile phones have great cameras built in and the price for a good mobile phone is usually a lot less than a stand alone camera.

I'd better get back to my photo re-taking, yawn......

Favorite piece of jewellery today - Baby items charm bracelet.

Charms

Received new jewellery in the post yesterday, some of the items were charm bracelets. These were from the new supplier I have previously mentioned who makes her own items. These charm bracelets are unique not just because they are handmade but due to the charms hanging from the links.

One of the bracelets is aimed at new mothers or pregnant women as this bracelet has charms related to babies - e.g. pram, bottles, baby shoes, dummy, etc, a nice idea for a gift from a husband or grandparents. Plus the bracelets are not expensive as they are silver tone not real silver so the cost won't dig into the baby items fund!

These charm bracelets do make me start thinking 'out of the box' and start imagining different / unusual jewellery pieces for resale, but as previously stated I don't think I'd have the patience to make loads of jewellery!

Favorite piece of jewellery today - Heart fairy necklace

Jewellery making.

I've been looking at jewellery making sites online and found some really good designs. I'm not sure if I would have the patience to actually make any for resale, I get bored really easily, but making one off for personal use could be interesting!

One of the sites I looked at was chain maille jewellery making with jump rings, some of the finished designs looked really intricate but are (supposedly!) very easy to make. Hmm, I might have a try later next week and see if these really are simple to put together.

I did start thinking if anyone can make lovely costume jewellery then why would anyone buy costume jewellery? I then answered my own question - time, energy and being bothered to make it in the first place!

I have found a supplier who can be bothered, has the patience and whose handmade jewellery seems to be excellent from the pictures supplied, so I've ordered a sample of her work. Hopefully I'll be expanding the store later this month if this suppliers work really is as good as I think it is!

Favorite piece of jewellery today - Flower ring.

Starting a jewellery store.

I've just spent some time putting some more items on my web shop. I'm really getting good at this!, when I first started uploading the photo's and putting in descriptions it took me ages... now I can do this in half the time. So if anyone out there is thinking of starting their own online shop as a hobby or trying to make an online wage then I can say it's not as hard as it looks.

Personally I use auctiva commerce as all the basics are there ready and waiting for you to use, they have step by step tutorials and a support team for the really hard problems!

The hardest part of web sales is getting customers. Putting all your stock online is great fun but if you are sitting in front of your computer screen waiting with bated breath for orders but are not getting your site promoted then you are going to suffocate!

Google is great with all the help they give, google base, adwords, etc, as I've had quite a few orders coming through from google. Getting banners/links on other websites is also good.

Favorite piece of jewellery today - Blue crystal necklace.

New Costume jewellery store blog!

Hi, as everyone knows, jewellery (the stuff you would want to wear!) isn't cheap. Assuming you don't wear the plastic lucky bag style stuff :-) Glitters jewellery sells the pieces I would wear, (hopefully my taste isn't awful!), none of the items are silver or gold and as such are at affordable prices.

Glitters jewellery started due to my kids spending their entire pocket money on one or two pieces of jewellery that either fell apart or looked tacky. I looked at a few wholesale places and found these high street shops were not just pricing their jewellery at double their buying price or even triple, they were getting jewellery for mere pennies and making bucket loads of profit!! For example - plain butterfly stud earrings, available in a local shop for £4.99 each, available wholesale pk 10 for £5.99! (no, I don't sell these in my store!)

So, I decided to purchase the wholesale lots of jewellery and let the kids buy what they wanted without using up all of their pocket money! Result:-) kids not moaning for more money!! (Happy mum!)

Only problem was what to do with the rest of the items. Solution - sell the remaining jewellery at much lower prices than the high street shops, make a bit of profit and feel happy that I'm not fleecing anyone blind! (plus this indulges my love of shopping for nice jewellery without annoying my husband!)

Glitters now stocks womens jewellery as well as mens and childrens and some other bits and pieces (e.g: perfume) as I can't ignore a good deal when I see one.



Favorite piece of jewellery for today - Pink dangly