All this takes effort, you know.

I mentioned in my last post about pricing- and value. I've talked about this before but in a rather mystical way. This time I want to talk about it in more practical terms.

There's a lot to say on the subject of pricing, but I want to focus on a subject that often gets left out, so let's make this first post about 'effort'. Merle and I have been back-and-forthing in my inbox about pricing and if there's (more than) one thing we agree on it's that people don't realise the effort that goes into a handmade product.

Most of us factor in price of materials and time taken to actually make the product, but what about all the driving, walking, rummaging through baskets, sifting through filthy boxes full of rusty junk, getting lost on the way to garage sales, getting up at the crack of dawn in the middle of winter to go to the car boot sales, admission prices to junk markets, food while you're out there, your partner moaning they're tired/bored/hungry, kids harassing you and touching all that delicate china that people seem to need to display within grasping distance of a 3 year old...all that is effort! Sometimes fun, but always effort.


To use an example, I'll show you a typical breakdown of what goes into every wrist cuff of mine:

1. Find vintage lace and hardware - This isn't very easy here in Australia- flea markets and antique malls are few and far between, and what there is of them is often mostly 'obvious' stuff- the kind of things that people can obviously use or admire (read: the kind of thing that's worth money). Stall holders (bless them all) don't really understand why anyone would want an old ledger that's been written in, faded funfair tickets or broken jewellery- let alone scratched buttons and rust-stained lace! So I have a few options:

+ Buy things online: Upside is there's a lot of great stuff! Downside is that due to the currency conversion and high shipping costs it can be expensive, and therefore makes my end product higher in price. There are Australian sellers on eBay but due to the rarity of this stuff here bidders come out of the woodwork (often in the last 10 seconds...grrr) so it can be a real bloodbath!


+ Out on the streets: Thrift shops are the best bet since flea markets are pretty much non-existent. You can get lucky in thrifts (a Georgian heart pendant for $1 is my greatest achievement so far, and that's mine forever!) but it's getting harder and harder to find legitimate vintage/quality jewellery (I don't use plastic or cheap 'five and dime' stuff). Junk/antique shops are the next contender; I very luckily have just found a place locally here, run by a lady who's husband restores old sewing machines so she has a lot of stuff that comes in the drawers of his acquisitions. The down side to these places is they only sell 'shiny' things- it's rare to find worn out things the way I want them.


2.Cleaning, sorting, 'harvesting' - Once I've found my bits and pieces it's time to prepare them- very rarely do I get something I can just dump on the desk ready for use. After cleaning (and some stuff can really reek!) necklaces have to be taken apart, beads un-strung, sequins un-threaded from clothing etc. In the case of finding bags of mixed goods they need to be sorted through into piles of wanted and not wanted (to go on eBay- selling off part of what you buy is a good way to recover costs!) and from there the cleaning and harvesting continues.


3. Fabric preperation - To get the unique look of my wrist cuffs I dye fabric trims and laces, often in very experimental ways using methods I've developed over time. Adding 'corruptors' to the mix, using cold water when hot is required, minimising water use so that the dye is stronger etc...all of this has been developed over time by me. Some of these processes can take up to 3 days to complete depending on the weather- one bucket actually took a week as I was experimenting with soaking fabrics in expired dye. My fabrics and laces all have tiny variations in the staining level that although it might look flat brown from first glance, closer inspection reveals purple patches, streaks where the dye didn't get under folds because I didn't stir it enough or I sat objects on the lace etc. It's these deliberate methods that give the uneven result that really makes the lace more special than an ordinary brown dyed piece.


In line with my eco policy I don't use the washer or dryer for my dyeing- it's all buckets and sunshine -and sometimes rain! Soon I'll be implementing eco dyes and that's going to take more effort than things now, but it's better for the planet. Also it's now nearly winter here and the sunshine is on low supply, so my days of dying lace are much less likely than a few months ago, and it's likely my stores will drop as the winter deepens.


After factoring in cost of dye, I have to think about this lace and fabric as an end product- not only have I found this stuff and probably stripped it from clothing, but I've just dyed it as well. I could sell it as is and still require a profit for all that work!


3a - There's a sub-plot to fabric preparation that involves the other handmade elements of my work- paper backed glass pendants, book scrap buttons, polymer clay details... (Ahh..a new element, images coming soon!) For a lot of you out there it probably means collaging for slide pendants, stamping and moulding PMC, making bezels etc. All these things that we could theoretically sell as handmade supplies, yet we make them so we can further put them in other things we make! We must be crazy.


4. Building the cuff - Now it's down to business! Laying out fabrics and laces, ripping bits off other bits, layering same or contrast colours, digging through cases and boxes and scrap containers for that 'perfect' bit. This can take hours and is surprisingly harder than one might think. I often do 4 or 5 at a time to keep my hours down (reduce labour costs) but sometimes that can hamper you if you end up losing your temper over a cuff that won't get with the program! (There's always one.)


This brings me to an element that we often omit more than effort. Talent. I'll talk about it more in another post but talent- real talent- is a rare thing. I'm talking about the ability us artists have to look at something and see it in a way that's different enough from the norm to make it our own. I'm talking about (cliché time) 'unique vision' -not just following guides in DIY books. (Though believe me, there are a lot of people that can't do that either. I could tell you a story about a woman I met a few months ago who didn't even have the skills to wrap a gravy boat in some newspaper for me, but let's leave that for the 'people are *this* dumb' posts!)

Talent is just as much a valid aspect of your pricing as materials and labour. Keep that in mind.


6.The sweat This is the bit that involves many hours of sitting around staring at the TV or the wall of the studio. This is the bit where you're tediously stitching and stitching, tangling your cotton, stabbing yourself in the finger, etc. Not just stitching together laces and fabrics, but sewing on buttons and buckles and God knows what, and backing the things and finally adding snaps or elastic loops.


7.Afterwork - No it ain't done yet! Just because your product is finished, doesn't mean time and effort is. Now you have to photograph the bugger, which means setting up your props and table and tripod and etc outside or near a window with plenty of natural light. (The flash is your enemy, I'll do a post on good photography one day!) When that's done there's always a certain amount of post-processing your images will need- colour adjustments most likely since I've never met a purple I can shoot accurately, no matter how fancy my white balance.

Don't forget - and this might seem obvious to some- to factor in the time it takes for you to list your work on Etsy (or where ever you sell), the fees that it costs to do so AND the fees it will incur once you've sold it.


8. Because one day... some obviously deranged person comes along and falls in love with your work, and lo- they pay the price you asked for it! MADNESS! But the work isn't over. Now you have to package the piece as well. This is a tricky game which deserves it's own post- packaging is just as much a part of your business as the actual item is- and it costs time and money to find a style that works for you and represents your business- and then source all the stuff!


See? By now you might have realised that there's much more work in your work than you thought. In fact even more than you thought- half of this came to me as I was writing and let me tell you, I didn't realise how much I slave for this 'art lark'! It is a very pleasurable slaving though.

But that's the thing- finding the middle ground between pricing yourself out of the market and doing it for the love is hard, but it's there, and once you find it everything else will be easier. You can say 'oh but listing it all like this makes it look like such a bother, but it's not.' And you're right- to us it's not. It's what we love, we do it every day because it's inside us and needs to come out. But to other people it would be a bother- they don't have time to put into what we create, that's why they buy it from us.


Let's sum it up- if someone wanted me to make them a wrist cuff; find the materials, clean them up, dye them, lay them together so they looked good, sew them together, photograph it, list it, process the order, pack it in an envelope and take it to the post office. And all for $50. I'd tell them where to stick their $50, and you'd do the same! But I do it now. The most expensive cuff in my shop right now is $US32, and that works out at $AU50. Considering all that above, that should be the cheapest.

As a gift to someone you love you'd gladly do it for free, but that's a gift of love, not a means of income. Because you're also running a business. Aren't you? Is that what you're in it for, in the long run? Do you eventually (if not now) need this art lark to actually pay the bills, put food on the table, clothes on your loved ones, a roof over your head? Sure there are other means of income for artists- holding workshops, publishing books, writing magazine articles and being featured in the latest issue of Artful Blogging... *cough*


Look- I know this doesn't make it any easier to price your stuff, in fact it might just make it harder. But it might also help you concrete that your stuff really is worth what you secretly want to charge. And that's the biggest hurdle of all- to convince yourself that you are worth the price. Your time, effort, materials, labour, packaging, hours spent swearing over a red hot lightbox...all these things matter but none more so than your own talent.

I can spout on about this all day (and by the length of this blog post, I feel like I have) but I have just as hard a time pricing my stuff than you have with yours. Maybe we should price each other's stuff! But see- even that would be difficult, since we don't know how much goes into the little steps. Only you know what your stuff is really worth- and you do know, deep down- and once you have the confidence to believe it there are plenty of people out there who will agree -and pay it.

Now go and raise your prices. :P