All My Eggs In One Basket

The world of Arts and Crafts is super-saturated with jewelry designers/makers.  I've known this for years but it never became more apparent than after I lost my one and only source of  selling.

 Years ago I used to do the art shows and fairs, granted it was a lot of work to haul everything from my  vehicle over to my assigned booth location and then hassle with getting the tent set up, the tables in place and then arranging an assortment of displays and all the various pieces of my work.  It was easy to envy those who didn't have all those little bits and pieces to fuss over, seemed as though they were able to get in at the last moment, set up and were ready for business in a matter of minutes; likewise they packed up at the end of the event and were long gone whereas I was still packing up boxes of jewelry and displays and still had to face hauling tables to my car and taking my tent down. 

Having my jewelry in a shop or gallery was a lot less work, a lot less hassle, but not totally hassle-free.  Occasionally a jewelry tag went missing and the jewelry was sold with the wrong ID number. Then it required detective work to figure out what piece was actually sold and at what price.  That's when I decided I did not wish to have my jewelry spread out all over the county.  Yes I know that having all my eggs in the one proverbial basket was not a good idea but the thought of trying to keep tabs on a number of items placed in several different shops overwhelmed me. 

When my one and only resource had to relocate her shop and decided to discontinue having an Artisans Gallery, I was forced to look around for other venues.  That's when I was truly struck by how saturated the market was with handmade jewelry.  Shop after shop, boutique after boutique, gallery after gallery met with me and shook their heads saying they already had far too much inventory from local jewelry makers and just could not take on any more.

To be continued ....

A Little Bit of Nothing

Photo taken in Tucson Arizona of my great-granddaughter, my grandson and me and my fantastic hubby (we've been married now for 45 wonderful years).

So what have I been doing ?  It's been months and months since my last post and all I have to show for that lost time is . . . well very, very little. 
Over the past few months I've been trying to find resources in which to sell my handcrafted jewelry.  My primary source, a studio/gallery in Bradenton's Village of the Arts, has moved and the owner is no longer maintaining a gallery featuring items made by local artists.  Keeping all of one's eggs in one basket is never a good idea but I really didn't want to have to keep track of inventory scattered about in several different boutiques and galleries, it was hard enough keeping an account of pieces at just one venue.  Perhaps I'll post more about those trials and tribulations at another time.

Recently I had a heart stopping experience.  One of those moments when that little voice inside my head screams out; "OMG !  What have I done ?"
A couple of days ago I decided to delete an old email account that I never use.  I sat up the account with Gmail because , at that time, I wanted to open another Etsy shop and needed a second email address in  order to  do so.  That was several years ago and the GMail  account was never used.  Since it was occupying space on my computer desktop it seem logical to delete it.  A couple of days later I tried to access my blog and got a white page informing me that ABeadersBlog did not exist and did I wish to use that domain ?  That's when my heart went crashing down to my stomach. Good grief what in blazes had I done ?  Unfortunately when I thought I was deleting my GMail account I was inadvertently deleting my whole Google account instead . . . including Blogger!

Therefore my blog vanished from the Internet for several days before I discovered what I had done.  Trying to restore one's Google account is doable but believe me it is one big, freakin' hassle.   I went around in perpetual circles, like a dog chasing its tail, and was getting nowhere.  Time and time again I went through their procedure to restore my Google account and spent hours accomplishing nothing.

To make an extremely long story shorter, let me just say that through some bit of Google website magic the mysterious "verification page", that I had so vainly sought, finally appeared and allowed me to submit my request to restore my account.  All of this required my changing my password a couple of times, filling out a form, getting an automated phone call with a "magic" code and then inserting said  "magic" code into its proper box.   Afterwards my blog reappeared as did several new gray hairs and a couple of wrinkles that I didn't have before all of this rigmarole !
But an invaluable lesson was learned;  Look, not once but twice or even thrice, before hitting the delete button !!!