Wot a shame

In my last post I was really excited about the idea of a wholesale order. I've spent time trying to work out wether it is something I can do for the money that I was being offered. We had agreed that I would do some sample beads for this week.

What became obvious really quickly was that for the price being offered I would need to make the beads in 1.5 mins... they were taking me 4-6 mins. That is such a big differnce that there is no way I can do that. It also measn that onee all the costs are take out I would be working at below the minium wage.

I feel really sad about it but I know that declining is the right thing to do. After all I'm the one who often talks on forums about charging a fair amount for your beads. I also strongly believe that yoiu offer a worker a fair wage... wether that be in this country or abroad.

This experience has reminded me of thoughts I had last summer about fair trade goods and just how wrong it is for workers to be paid so little in India and China when they make beads. Not only are the beads of a poor quality, and possilby not annealed so they are not strong, but the workers work in really hot environments.

Thanks for reading

Julie

Exciting News

I feel like bouncing, I'm so excited. I've been talking to some one about the possibility of doing some wholesale bead making for them. All that needs to happen is for me to do some test beads to see if they are happy with what they receive and for me to be certain that its a commitment I can keep to.

Hopefully by this time next week I'll know whether it is something I am able to do and maintain. If I can it will mean that it frees me up to make the more arty jewellery I want to do... so this could be the answer to my prayers about what to do with my time

The rest of my evening tonight has been preparing an order for a local shop... I really had forgotten how long that takes... although I do one once a month for them... I really must have short term memory problems

Watch this space for updates

Julie

New Beads

Hey there,

Today's been an interesting day. The lock on the flat was completely broken... it took the poor guy an hour to get into the flat. At least it was secure.

He managed to open the door just as the surveyor for the new mortgage arrived... He was half an hour early so it was good the locksmith had managed to do his bit

The good news is that there should be no problem with the mortage

But I started the cleaning... they guys who were lodging had no idea what cleaining was. Whats really making me sad is that my brand new cooker looks absolutely aweful. Lets hope the new guys in will respect the place more.

So today has been a day of cleaning and sorting the flat and not bead making. But I do have a bunch of new bead sets up on the website

Thanx for reading

Julie

Don't ya just love it when technology works

There have been a couple of really fantastic things which have happened over the last couple of days which will make my bead listing soooo much easier.

Firstly Mr Site has listened to its customers and there is now the ability to add more pictures to the listing... and is soooo much easier to list items. I just need to get all my pictures to line up with the changes... but hey that's no problem.

And the second thing... Skype have finally added a patch. Doesn't sound so exciting, but what was happening is that when I was listing beads, explorer would regularly crash... no warning. I was getting really frustrated ... and had told the guys at Skype as much.... but today.... wooo hooo... no problem. The patch works

It only took a few minutes to change to the new Mr Site layout and normally doing something like that would have taken me hours with these two glitches...

Julie is a happy girl..

.... oooooh and a quick flat update.... that seems to be going smoothly to... well getting the passport anyway... the passport offices has such an incredibly simple and efficient system.... and I have a passport... just need to get the locks on the flat sorted tomorrow...

New beadies should be listed tomorrow.... I have some in the kiln and some spacers so I can list some stuff I made before

Thanx for reading

Julie