Have beads, want to make jewellery

kittykirsty

Hi guys,

I have beads and supplies for making jewellery which i had dabbled in a tiny bit in the past, mostly to give to friends but i did sell a couple of pieces on eBay. Another MoneySaver mentioned etsy.com where people can sell their handmade stuff, and i thought it would be good to give it a go.

But... do i need to be a business to do this? Do i need to declare anything? I just want to start small and could see myself selling £5 - £10 pounds of jewellery a month, so really just trying it out.

honey28

Could you perhaps arrange a jewelllery party at your or a friends house and sell some there and offer an incetive for another person to arrange a party? This is something I have been looking into starting after being at a jewellery party at Christmas time. Do you mind me asking where you get supplies for making jewellery as I would be interested in starting this myself - you can PM me if you prefer
Good Luck!

kittykirsty

Hi honey28, sorry it's taken me so long to reply, i'd forgotten i'd made this thread! I swear my memory is getting worse each day! :eek:

I have bought beads from eBay and the Brighton Bead Shop as well as ones that i just find in markets or smaller shops (like the ArtStore in Glasgow, i spent far too much money in there!). Even charity shops and fairs have nice bead necklaces etc which i have bought before and stripped the beads off to do my own thing with!

Also, etsy that i mentioned in my first post, some sellers have beads as well as jewellery that look great! Haven't bought beads from there, but there are loads of individual sellers, somewhat like eBay.

The brighton bead shop has an online shop here: www.beadsunlimited.co.uk and they are so friendly and helpful!

I haven't bought from eBay for a while, but i'll PM you the sellers i bought most from, don't know whether i should post them on here or not.

With regards to your suggestion of jewellery parties, i'm not sure if that's the kind of thing i want to do, and not sure whether i've got enough friends to make it worthwhile to be honest

I was wondering more about the legalities of selling casually on a website like etsy, and whether i really should be registered as a business, and what that entails? If anyone could give me more info on that i would be really grateful! :cool:
[SIZE=-1] [/SIZE]

mkt

I run a jewellery business, and started out the same as you - I made a few pieces as a hobby, and fancied dipping my toe in to see if it would go anywhere.

I registered myself as self-employed (in addition to being employed), which I would recommend you do. You can opt out of additional National Insurance contributions if you earn less than a certain amount from your business each year (something around the thousand pound mark, I recall), so if you don't make any money you won't be penalised, but if you do start making money you'll be all nice and legal. Note that you'll also have to complete your own tax return at the end of the year, so start keeping receipts for EVERYTHING now.

I decided to set up my own site rather than use etsy.com - it's a very saturated market for one thing, and for another there are plenty of people on there underselling their work, making it hard to get a decent price for your pieces.

I'd recommend visiting forums for creative small businesses (http://www.theswitchboards.com/forum/ is particularly good) before you make any firm decisions - although most of them are American (and therefore not so useful on, say, legal or tax matters), you can get a lot of useful advice on general topics such as pricing, where to sell, etc.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to PM me.

Good luck!