Studio Saturday with Jangles

Welcome to Studio Saturday! Each week one of our contributors gives you a sneak peek into their studio, creative process or inspirations. We ask a related question of our readers and hope you'll leave comments! As an incentive we offer a free prize each week to bribe you to use that keyboard. The following week we choose a random winner. Last weeks winner is Christine Damm Congratulations! You have one of Heather's floral beads. Send us an e-mail with your address and we will get it right out to you.

This week we are in the studio with Jennifer Heynen of Jangles.

Hi there, Well we have a bit of a theme running here with studio Saturdays. It's funny I was already working on my post for this week when I read Heather's studio post from last week. Heather is debating whether a wholesale line of jewelry would be right for her. I actually am working on my wholesale line as we speak. I will be at the Buyers Market of American craft for my sixth year in February. So I am in full gear getting my line together. I actually started out making jewelry to wholesale with my beads. This was eight years ago. After the first show customers kept wanting to buy my beads individually. I gave in a few years later and boy am I glad I did. I still really enjoy my line of jewelry and it's a lot of fun to work on throughout the year, but making beads is my real love. So this week I thought I would show you a little about my line and show you how I go about designing it. The picture above is a section of my work table, it is covered in jewelry and beads, they are all in various stages of being turned into jewelry.

I always go back and look at my jewelry orders throughout the year to see what sold the most. I make sure I keep my best sellers in my line from year to year. I like to have 3-5 styles of necklaces in my line. I try to make them different price points. A few high end show stopping designs and then some more practical every day kind of necklaces. I also like to have a smaller pendant type piece too. Once I get these 3-5 designs figured out and I am happy with how they look. I will expand on the color choices. I like to have 4-6 choices for each style necklace. In the photo below you can see here are five of my everyday necklaces.


Once the necklaces are designed, you must have coordinating bracelets and earrings. Whether you like to match or not, the stores and their customers will want matching. Stores like to have a nice coordinated group in their display. As you can see below, here are the bracelets I have designed to go with the necklaces above.


I have then made earrings to go with the necklaces also.


This is one of my smaller pendants, they also have matching earrings, but then they coordinate with the other bracelets and earrings for mixing and matching.



So you can probably see why my table is covered with jewelry. I need to keep everything out where I can see it. This way I know if I need one more pair of earrings or a necklace etc. It takes a lot of work to get a line going but once you have some good basics it's always fun to add new work. I make sure that 30-50 percent of my work is new at the show. Stores and Galleries like to have new and fresh inventory. This gets their customers excited.

Once my jewelry is designed, I have to photograph it and get it made into a catalog and line sheet. I will hand these out at the show and mail them out to previous customers. Oh and then there is the display, and shipping it all to the show, as you can see the to-do list is very long right now for the Buyer's Market....

This weeks question is do you have a consistent line or style of jewelry that you sell? Do you find it easier to work on variations of the same best-selling designs or do have to make something new each time you sit down?