Taking photos can be one of the most daunting parts of selling your jewelry online especially if you’re not sure how to take photos of jewelry to display the important details. Ensuring that you’re correctly capturing the details of your handmade jewelry can take hours if you’re not properly trained. While I am no master, I have several friends who are trained photographers. My friend Liz Banman not only took all the photography for my website, but she also gave me these five helpful tips how to take jewelry photos. Use them to capture your own professional jewelry photos. 1: […]
Balanced and Beautiful Handmade Jewelry
As a jewelry designer, I always strive to make beautiful handmade jewelry. That being said, sometimes I can look at a design I’m working on and know that it’s just not perfect yet. That may be why I have projects that wait weeks, months, or even years before they’re created; something isn’t quite right and I’m waiting for the right inspiration to help me with the overall design. The same thing goes when I’m trying to reproduce any of my already made jewelry designs. While my jewelry designs are one-of-a-kind, sometimes I like the finished design enough to try and […]
Holiday Marketing Tips for Your Jewelry Business
The holiday season is one that is a busy time of year, and those of us who own a jewelry business is no exception! This is the time of year where we need to play a very important balancing act; that of the marketer and that of the maker. While I have no doubt that we all have our own unique design style, I do think that holiday marketing tips are valuable, so today I’m going to focus on a few things you can do as a jewelry business owner to plan ahead to make the season more Merry and […]
College Spirit Football Jewelry
Inspiration can hit at the most random moments and sometimes in the most organic situations. This is exactly what happened with my football jewelry necklace design. In 2015 one of my best friends was married the day after the University of Colorado vs. Colorado State University football game. If I’m going to be perfectly honest, for those who attend either school this game is a rivalry where both sides do a considerable amount of trash talking. Because the game was the same day as the rehearsal as the game, and because I was one of the few in the wedding […]
How to Take Jewelry Photos: Four Lighting Considerations
One thing unites all jewelry makers: we are great at making jewelry. That being said, some of us may need some tips for learning how to take jewelry photos that show off the jewelry well. For a long time, taking quality photos was something I dreaded. That ended when my friend Liz Banman gave me some helpful tips for capturing quality photos for my website. One of the most important ingredients of taking great photos is lighting. It can make or break your photos. If you are struggling with how to take jewelry photos with the right lighting, have no […]
Updating Jewelry Listings Using the Etsy App for Sellers (and Other Tips)
Like many artisans, I have an Etsy store that hosts all my final jewelry designs for anyone who is interested in purchasing. While I may understand how to set up online store platforms, I already have trouble maintaining an Etsy store, managing listings is daunting. Maintaining listings seemed to be involved: my old process included taking photos in a lightbox, uploading photos to my computer, adding a watermark and cropping images, then adding all the necessary information to Etsy. The process took hours away from what I truly enjoyed doing: making jewelry. For this reason, I rarely took the time […]
Handmade Bracelet Designs: 4 Tips for Jewelry Designers
I put a lot of emphasis on creating beautiful necklace designs, but as I was working my way through my inventory I realized that I have a lot of pretty bracelet designs I’ve made over the years. Sometimes when I’m waiting for my jewelry making inspiration to hit I can set the materials aside and quickly create a beautiful bracelet instead. Instead of always focusing on one template or rule, I’ve found that my handmade bracelet designs allow me to be more creative and flexible. Here are 4 different “rules” I tend to live by when I design bracelets. Multi strands: […]
HTML Coding Basics for Jewelry Designers
HTML coding basics are helpful to know if you have a jewelry business website. HTML is the building blocks of your website; think of it as the blueprint for your websites that browsers read to display on your computer. Sometimes though, when you’re working on a blog post, or pasting in other elements, things just don’t display correctly. In this instance, knowing HTML coding basics can help you troubleshoot what’s wrong. After working in email and websites for the last five years, I’ve learned some important HTML basics you can use to modify basic text elements that I want to […]
Blue for You Jewelry
Sometimes when I get into my studio a particular color speaks to me. This has been the case over the last month.My favorite colors remain to this day to be blue and black. They often make their way into my jewelry designs paired with silver, my favorite metal. I recently re-found some stunningly blue Swarovski crystals. When I was in the studio several components that have been waiting on my bench for the right inspiration fit perfectly with these beautiful crystals. Instead of fighting it, sometimes I trust my eye and hope that the right person will appreciate the color […]
How to Use Google Analytics for My Website: 5 Helpful Views for Your Jewelry Website
You’ve successfully gone through all the steps for setting up Google Analytics and you’ve generated several codes over the last few weeks. By now you may be asking yourself the million dollar question: how to use Google Analytics for my website? In this post I’ll help you break down how to track your UTM codes, and also provide four of my favorite reports to look up using Google Analytics. Tracking Your UTM Codes: Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns What’s cool about this view is it automatically filters by your Campaign Name. Highlighted above you’ll see specific UTM codes that […]