Handmade Bracelets, Unique Handcrafted Jewelry, Horse Jewelry Bracelets

1. Touch the surface of metal jewelry as little as possible. Silver and copper jewelry will quickly discolor from the oils, sweat and other impurities on your hands,

2. Do not wear handmade jewelry to wash the dishes, while washing your hands or showering. The detergents that we use everyday will harm your favorite handmade bracelets and handcrafted rings.

3. Avoid using hand sanitizers while wearing handmade rings. Even the best protective finishes cannot withstand repeated use of hand sanitizers.

4. Whenever possible buy handcrafted jewelry that has protective coatings. It is easier to prevent tarnishing than to remove tarnish.

5. Store your silver and copper handmade jewelry in a tarnish-free cloth or in an airtight plastic bag. Exposure to air and humidity will increase the chances of tarnishing.

6. Avoid the build up of hairspray on handmade earrings and handcrafted barrettes or hair clips. Put your earrings and hair clips on last.

7. Do not wear handmade jewelry when participating in sports, sunbathing or swimming. Water and excessive sun can discolor your handmade jewelry.

8. Take care not to scratch, bend or damage your jewelry. Choose your jewelry wisely for the occasion. If you are gardening or cleaning where you will be in contact with water or chemicals try to pick jewelry that will not be damaged.

Keep in mind that handmade jewelry is fragile and not usually meant to endure the beating that it sometimes receives. Taking special steps to prevent damage to your handcrafted jewelry pieces will ensure that you always look great wearing your favorite handmade earrings, bracelets and necklaces.

Handmade Bracelets, Unique Handcrafted Jewelry, Dragonfly Jewelry

Well, it’s that time of year again, the wholesale jewelry and gift shows for 2010 have started! It seems as though we just started preparing for the new season and now it’s here. Our wholesale show preparations are finished, new designs and lines of our unique handmade jewelry including new handmade earrings and handmade bracelets are now available for review at our website.

For Buyers the preparations are just beginning. Here are some tips for getting the most out of your buying season:

1. Review your sales records for last year. This will give you a good idea of what sells and what hasn’t sold well in your area. Sometimes this review will surprise you.

2. Eliminate slow sellers, discount them and sell through remaining stock to make room for new products.

3. Go through the buyers guides for the wholesale jewelry and gift shows that you will be attending. Mark your suppliers booths on the show map to ensure you place your orders with your existing suppliers. Some shows have expanded in recent years, the CGTA show in Toronto for example, a lot of your wholesale jewelry suppliers have moved into larger booths because of the expansion of the Toronto Congress Centre, make sure you know where they are so you don’t miss out on seeing their new handmade jewelry and unique gifts for 2010.

4. Make a budget and stick to it! Make allowances for new products from existing wholesale suppliers and well as new suppliers minimum order requirements. Leave yourself room for some last minute additions.

5. Research new products online. Go through the buyers’ guide and visit the websites of suppliers you are interested in. You can find out about their products and services, minimum orders, shipping costs, etc. without walking that extra mile to see their booth.

6. Make a list of questions for suppliers. During the hustle and bustle of shows important questions sometimes get overlooked.

7. Take advantage of “Show Specials”. Many suppliers will offer free shipping or free point of purchase displays. Displays, especially for handmade jewelry, will greatly increase your sales. Most of our customers who have taken advantage of our jewelry display packages have seen dramatic increases in sales of our handcrafted jewelry, sometimes 200-300% increases.

8. Make sure to offer your customers a variety of unique gift ideas. Focus on your best selling price points, but also offer some high-end as well as low-end alternatives.

9. Keep in mind your customers! If you are a local retailer you will want to freshen up your existing unique handmade jewelry lines for your existing customer base. If you are in a resort or tourist centre you can stick will proven sellers as your customers are always changing.

10. Wear comfortable shoes!

Making the right preparations will ensure your buying success. Research is key, these days everyone is online and trying to provide you all the information you need to make the correct buying decisions for your stores. We hope these tips will help you with your Wholesale Jewelry and Gift Show preparations.

Handcrafted Jewelry, Handmade Earrings, Butterfly Jewelry Earrings

Handmade jewelry internet marketing is like any other kind of marketing.  You are trying to reach a niche market so you must plan accordingly. You have to start by identifying your target market and the keywords they use to find your products. You have to learn what your customers are looking for in order to develop content that your target niche will respond to and take action.

In order to identify your target market start with what you already know about your customers. Some people talk about geo-targeting, demographics and value proposition. What these big words boil down to is know who buys your products, where they buy your products, when they buy your products and why they buy your products. Google webmaster tools are great for analyzing your target keywords but you are the one who knows your products and customers the best. When selling handmade jewelry participating at craft shows is one of the best ways to reach that niche market. When marketing online finding handmade craft sites would then be the natural choice as they cater to the same niche market.

How you want to be perceived by your target market will define your approach.  Identify what your customers want and write your website content to fill that need. There are important principles of traffic generation you need to understand in order to be successful at bringing visitors into your website. Those visitors need to be targeted to your niche and the search engine organic searches are generally your best source of targeted visitors.

Search engine optimization is the best strategy to rank higher in the search engines organic searches. Your website needs content that appeals to your customers while at the same time gives the search engines information about your website. Essentially you are trading your time for traffic. Creating good content, links and backlinks are great SEO and can generate traffic directly through visitor clicks. These methods take a lot of time and effort but are well worth your time.

Make sure to have great content and start asking related sites for links. A good way to get reciprocal links is to contact the webmaster of related sites. A friendly email saying that you think their website would be beneficial to your website visitors and perhaps their visitors would find your website information useful. Let them know that you will leave their link even if they don’t link back to you is a nice gesture that might get your link request more attention. These links will increase your traffic as well as getting the search engines to visit your site more often with the added benefit of ranking higher in the organic searches.

Backlinks are generated by submitting your sites to relevant directories, being involved in social networking, submitting articles, participating in forums and leaving comments at relevant websites. It is very important that your keyword or keyword phrase is hyperlinked in these backlinks. The more targeted links pointing back to you are like votes for your website. The more votes the higher you rank in the organic searches.

Most of all do not get discouraged when you do not get results overnight. There is no magic spell to website promotion just hard work. Whether you make handmade jewelry, wholesale jewelry or offer a service you will need to optimize your website for your niche market in order to get targeted traffic.

This is an original article from Jennifer Hisir of Handmade Jewelry by Copper Reflections.

Handmade Jewelry-Handmade Bracelets-Butterfly Jewelry

Do you have that person on your list that is always hard to buy for, the one with everything already? You spend hours scouring the stores to find perfect unique gifts for them every year. What you might not have thought of is handmade jewelry. Handmade earrings, unique bracelets and handcrafted necklaces make gift giving easy.

With the wide selection of designs and styles of handmade jewelry you are sure to find the perfect unique gifts for everyone on your list. Handcrafted jewelry fits everyone’s style beautifully and elegantly without breaking your bank account.

Bold and bright or classic and elegant, the selections of styles in handmade jewelry are endless. Handmade bracelets and handmade earrings never go out of style. Whatever you are looking for you are not to be disappointed with handcrafted artisan jewelry. Beads and gemstones that sparkle or the classic and timeless elegance of metal handmade jewelry, are sure to brighten your day and fit every one on your list perfectly. The natural and fundamental elegance of copper, silver and gold will always enhance your special persons handcrafted jewelry collection.

Designs are offered in a huge variety including butterfly jewelry, hummingbird jewelry and dragonfly jewelry. Personalize your handmade jewelry gifts by choosing their favorite animal jewelry designs for that someone special. Wolf jewelry, horse jewelry, cat jewelry and dolphin jewelry are always on the favorite animal jewelry list. Paying extra attention to the preferences of your loved ones will guarantee the perfect unique gifts for any occasion.

Handmade earrings, Handcrafted jewelry, Unique Earrings with green patina

Creating incredible layers of color on your handmade jewelry is easily achieved with the use of Liver of sulfur. This wondrous chemical compound oxidizes many different metals creating fantastic colors on your handmade earrings and unique bracelets making your handmade jewelry extraordinary. The varieties of colors that can be achieved are incredible ranging from gold to black and everything in between. No other chemical can produce such wide-ranging color patterns on the surface of a variety of metals including silver and copper jewelry.

Working in a well ventilated area is a definite must, outdoors is preferable. The odor of rotten eggs given off by liver of sulfur can be overwhelming if used in a closed area. It is easy to be put off by the smell but the results that can be achieved are simply amazing.

Liver of sulfur comes in two types. The liquid form can be used straight from the bottle, but the shelf life is unpredictable even when stored in a cool, dark place. Solid liver of sulfur is usually sold in small chunks, which are mixed as needed. For this reason, it is better to buy small amounts of the solid and make your solution mixing only what you need to create the most beautiful handcrafted jewelry.

For your solution, put a 1cm or 1/4 inch clump of solid liver of sulfur in a glass or plastic container with about 1 cup of water. The color of the solution should be a very pale yellow. A strong solution will develop the colors too quickly to stop the process at your desired color while too weak of a solution can take too long and build a thick flaky crust. Experiment to find the best concentration for the metal you are working with to get the results you want.

Set up your workstation so you can easily go from one step to the next. Have a heat source, the liver of sulfur solution, cold water bath and finally a soapy baking soda rinse. The secret is to control the process is the solution strength and the temperature. The hotter solution will react more quickly and the colors will move faster from one color to the next. They roughly go from gold, pink, blue, purple, gray and finally black.

Before you begin, your metal handcrafted jewelry piece should be clean and free from dirt or oils from your hands. Wearing gloves throughout the process is preferable. Liver of sulfur will begin to react the instant you put handmade bracelets or handmade earrings into it. Let the color develop for a couple of seconds on the handmade jewelry piece, then put in the cold water to stop the patina forming. Repeat these steps until you reach the desired color. Finally, rinse the piece in soapy baking soda solution to remove any liver of sulfur residue that could continue to change the color of the patina. Do not rub the handcrafted jewelry piece with the baking soda mixture as any abrasive will damage the patina finish you have worked hard to create.

Liver of sulfur produces a patina finish on metal handmade jewelry but if not treated the effects will wear over time. Use a clear lacquer finish to protect your handmade earrings and handmade bracelets with their new patina finish. Be adventurous and watch how a little color can change your handcrafted jewelry into a masterpiece!

 
This article is an original article by Jennifer Hisir of Handmade Jewelry by Copper Reflections and may be reprinted as long as the hyper-links are kept intact with working links.

Handcrafted Jewelry-Handmade Bracelets-Dragonfly Jewelry

The artisans of Copper Reflections have seen large increases in Christmas gift orders over the last month. With cooler weather approaching handmade jewelry retailers are focusing on Christmas gifs sales which has led to a huge jump in wholesale jewelry and wholesale gifts orders. Please make sure to place your handcrafted jewelry and Christmas gift orders early to avoid delays in the postal service.

With large numbers of people shopping online for unique Christmas gifts the demand for handmade jewelry by Copper Reflections has skyrocketed. Copper Reflections will be introducing new retail online venues to keep up with the demand for their handcrafted jewelry and unique gift ideas.

For over 25 years the artisans of Copper Reflections have been providing the highest quality handmade jewelry and unique gifts. Every piece is individually silver plated and diamond cut on copper jewelry and handcrafted gifts. Each piece has a protective coating to ensure years of maintenance free enjoyment.

Offering a wide selection of handmade jewelry and unique gifts in styles and designs to suit every ones taste, Copper Reflections makes your Christmas shopping easy. Searching for the perfect unique Christmas gifts has never been easier with CopperReflections.com website. Browse through their unique jewelry and gifts collections including wildlife jewelry, animal jewelry, nature jewelry and Native American jewelry designs.  The animal jewelry collection offers a great variety of horse jewelry, butterfly jewelry, hummingbird jewelry, cat jewelry, dragonfly jewelry, dolphin jewelry and more. Find the perfect Christmas gifts for everyone on your list.

Hummingbird Bracelets, Handmade Bracelets, Unique Handcrafted Jewelry in Hummingbird themes

According to Native legends, the hummingbird is the joyful messenger and healer. When the hummingbird appears in a time of great sorrow and pain, healing will soon follow. It is said that when a hummingbird hovers near, you will receive a message of healing. Wearing hummingbird jewelry will make you feel happy and peaceful. Many people will compliment you on your handmade jewelry so here is a story about why the hummingbird holds a special place in our hearts.

A literal messenger of joy, this beautiful tiny bird, also called Sah Sen, represents friendship, playfulness, and is a symbol of good luck in Northwest Coastal Native art. It is a positive sign to see Sah Sen prior to a major event such as hunting or traveling to another village. Hummingbird’s ability to hover back and forth at great speeds is believed to be a skill for guiding the people; if they fall behind Hummingbird can easily back up to keep pace.

One story of Hummingbird tells of a warm, spring day. Summer was coming and the wild flowers were in full blossom. A young girl and her mother waded through the green grass, enjoying the bright colors. They stopped as Hummingbird joined them; buzzing and darting from flower to flower.

The little creature fascinated the child. She asked, “Why does such a tiny bird want to fly so fast? Why doesn’t it just stay at one flower instead of visiting every one?” Her mother sat down on a hill overlooking the field and said, “Let me tell you the story of Hummingbird.”

Many years ago there was a fragrant flower that rose every spring to display her beautiful petals and bright colors for all the world’s creatures to enjoy. The people and animals waited anxiously each spring for this special flower to appear. On that day they knew the warm, kind rays of summer had arrived. Raven saw how much joy this flower brought to the world, so the next spring when it appeared, he transformed it into a tiny bird. The bird had the colors of the green spring grass and the flashing red of a setting sun. Raven gave the bird a special gift to fly like sunlight flickering through tall trees. He also gave it a message to take to all the flowers. That’s why today we see Hummingbird buzzing from flower to flower, whispering a message. Hummingbird is thanking each flower for making our world a more beautiful place.

The mother looked at her child and said, “As you grow up, remember that like each flower, each person has gifts to give the world. In return that person will be thanked by the birds, animals and flowers for helping to make our world a better place for every one.”

The above story is as told by Robert James Challenger in the book Eagle’s Reflections and other Northwest Coast Stories available at Hill’s Native Art in Tofino, British Columbia. They have been our valued customers for many years and carry a wide selection of our work including our hummingbird jewelry and Native American jewelry.

Our hummingbird jewelry is inspired by the beauty of wildlife, animals and nature. Each piece is carefully designed and handcrafted especially for you. Hummingbird jewelry by the artisans of copperreflections.com provide handmade jewelry, wholesale jewelry and handcrafted jewelry suitable for any gift giving occasion including birthday gifts, anniversary gifts and Christmas gifts.

All our hummingbird jewelry designs are first hand drawn and transferred to copper sheets. Hummingbird jewelry designs are individually silver plated and diamond cut by hand to bring out the luster in the copper to give that special sparkle like diamonds. All our hummingbird jewelry designs are available on unique bracelets, handmade earrings, handcrafted necklaces, unique rings, chokers, pins, brooches, hairclips and lockets so they can all be made into matching sets.

On our website you will find many different trendy jewelry styles of hummingbird bracelets, hummingbird earrings, and hummingbird necklaces where we have used seashells, mother of pearl and abalone shells, to accent and highlight our unique hummingbird jewelry designs. We use a wide variety of techniques to make our hummingbird jewelry including etching, embossing and engraving. Hummingbird earrings like TS series are cut out and also two tone plated in gold and copper.

Our handmade hummingbird jewelry and unique hummingbird gifts will make the perfect gift for animal lovers and nature lovers. We hope that our hummingbird jewelry collection will bring you and your loved ones much enjoyment for many years. In our hummingbird jewelry collection you can be sure to find a special gift for your loved ones, unique gift ideas for women and animal lovers jewelry. We hope you will enjoy our handmade jewelry collections as we have been working hard for over 24 years to make it even more beautiful for you.

Handmade Jewelry, Handcrafted Lockets Necklaces, Butterfly Jewelry

Copper is beautiful color of metal that has been known to humans since the beginning of history. Many copper ornaments, coins and copper jewelry have been discovered during the excavations of the ancient cities. Being a soft metal and taking an easy shape made copper more versatile for making kitchen ware as well. We always admire the fascinating copper bowls, vases and jars in museums that were found in historical places from over 2,000 years ago. Because copper keeps water cold it was made into water jars and it was great a metal to cook in so many pots were discovered. Copper has been always one of the most functional metals.

Copper has been celebrated as a precious metal for centuries. Copper has often been used for its beauty and luster to create ornaments, handmade earrings, handmade bracelets, necklaces, rings, other handmade jewelry and unique gifts. Most people like the warm glow of copper for their unique jewelry and handcrafted jewelry pieces as copper’s beautiful earthy tone also gives a soothing and comforting effect.

Copper also made a great metal for making handmade jewelry and handcrafted unique jewelry by hammering, bending and giving different textures. Copper is the base metal for most of the elegant enamel and cloisonne jewelry that has been made for centuries. You can find these gorgeous enamel unique jewelry pieces in museums and the most expensive jewelry stores throughout Europe and in North America. Copper jewelry gained more importance as jewelry once the health benefits were discovered. Handmade bracelets, handmade rings, handmade earrings became more available and sought after. Copper absorbs the negative ions from the body and relieves the pains that arthritis and rheumatism cause. Some copper jewelry is also available with magnets to help relieve the pain more.

There is also another way of making copper jewelry that is very fascinating. This unique handmade jewelry was originated from an old Turkish art that goes back centuries. Handmade jewelry pieces are individually handcrafted in a process of many different steps in order to achieve very special unique jewelry. Animal jewelry, wildlife jewelry and Native American jewelry designs are drawn by hand and transferred onto copper. These unique horse jewelry, dolphin jewelry, hummingbird jewelry and dragonfly jewelry designs are then silver plated. To give a contrast between silver and copper, black color is used in between to separate these two parts of metal color. To highlight all these exceptional unique jewelry pieces, parts of the cat jewelry, wolf jewelry and nature jewelry is diamond cut. Diamond cut is done by hand and requires highly skilled craftsmanship that can only be obtained by years of training. Diamond cut, also known as bright cut, makes the copper jewelry, copper handmade bracelets, rings, earrings and necklaces look very valuable and expensive. These diamond cut unique jewelry pieces look like they have diamonds inserted in them and sparkle like the stars in the sky. Most people who like handmade jewelry and handcrafted jewelry appreciate all the skilled work that goes into this handcrafted artisan jewelry and they always cherish their handmade unique jewelry, value them and enjoy them for a long time. If an jewelry artisan is making copper jewelry, it is better to make sure to coat the handcrafted jewelry they are creating so people enjoy for a long time without polishing.

Handmade Bracelets, Handcrafted Jewelry, Dolphin Jewelry Bracelets

So where do you start? The first thing you will need to do is take great pictures of your handcrafted jewelry. “A picture is worth a thousand words” or not. Make sure the photos are in focus clearly showing your design, with small pieces like handmade earrings and bracelets this is very important. Don’t put jewelry on a rock or a hunk of wood, although it is very natural and artsy, it is too hard for people to make out in the seconds you have to catch their attention online. Your handmade jewelry should be on a plain background so it stands out clearly.

Now you need a website, if you’re just starting there are lots of free blogs out there. I prefer the WordPress.com, mostly because it’s easy and has lots of plug-ins to do all the SEO work for you. Blogger is also a great platform, easy to set up your template with lots of widgets and other cool stuff. There are so many free blogs check around for the best match for you. Once you are up and running you can invest more into the site but we are trying to save some money and do it all for free, for now.

Read, read and read more; you can never have too much information. The web is filled with great information; every time you see something new do a search until you understand what it means. SEO is the most important part of getting good search engine rankings. Make sure to have meta title, description and keywords tags. Don’t forget image alt attributes as well. Do your keyword research and write it into your content. Wordpress has lots of plugins that take the guesswork out of SEO.

Off-site SEO factors means links to your site. This is probably the hardest and most time consuming because you need to get related sites to link to you. Make sure your site is ready and has good content that other sites will want to link to. Stick with it and bit by bit links will come. Check other related sites link pages to get more links. Make sure you have your target keywords hypr-linked in your link information.

Do all these things then continually read and update your site as you go; this is a continuing process always needing to be tweaked. Check your statistics to see what is working and what isn’t. Change the things that aren’t working.

To get noticed you will need to join and participate in social networking sites, submit articles, write press releases and get listed in as many related directories as possible.

Time is also an important factor. Everything takes time so try not to get frustrated when things don’t happen overnight. Patience is a necessary virtue in wholesale handmade jewelry and online marketing.

If you make handmade jewelry or have a retail store that sells handcrafted artisan jewelry you need to be online! With millions of handmade jewelry websites how do you get your product seen online? It’s not going to be easy and it takes a lot of hard work, not to mention time. If you pay someone to get you to the first page it’s going to cost you. If you do it yourself it will take time, effort and a lot of reading, but it will be worth it and its kind of fun. Even though the competition is fierce, there is still room at the top if you want to play the online marketing game. Good luck to you in all your online marketing efforts!

Handmade Earrings, Handcrafted Jewelry, Horse Jewelry Earrings

Where do you find suppliers for wholesale handmade jewelry and gifts? You have lots of choices but obviously the easiest and fastest way would be online. Just Google or Yahoo! search “wholesale handmade jewelry” to find suppliers for your store, can’t get much easier than that! You can also search “handmade jewelry directories”, most web directories even have a separate section for unique handmade jewelry. You can search anywhere, anytime; whenever it is convenient for you. Today you can find everything you need online without all the expenses of attending the traditional Wholesale Jewelry and Gift Shows. Everyone has a contact us page so you can ask any questions you may have if its not already in the FAQ. Online companies try to give you as much information about their products as they can. This is hard to absorb in the hustle and bustle of shows but comes naturally when you are relaxed and interested in the product. You will know the special features and techniques used to make the handmade jewelry and gifts. This information will help you to sell the products better.

If you have a retail store or boutique these days you have to stand out from the crowd. With so many products available, providing handmade jewelry and unique gift ideas for your customers makes your store stand out and people take notice. Variety is the key to great sales. Provide your customers a wide range of styles, shapes, colors and prices. Offer a choice of materials; stones, beads, shells, resins and metals. You will find that casual sales become repeat customers if you select a great variety of unique handcrafted jewelry and gifts that will suit everyones personal style! Aim to give your customers an unique shopping experience, unusual high quality products and excellent personal service.

If you are more a hands-on type, wholesale jewelry and gift shows are the next best option. At these shows you will see the actual products but attending these shows can be quite costly, tiring and they are only held at certain times of the year. The wide range of products available might overwhelm first time buyers but you’ll quickly learn how to narrow your search to find the items you want to see. You may just find that you can sell the handcrafted products better when you have made a connection with a real person. Pay attention to how they sell their products to you and you can carry that over to when you are selling their products to your own customers. The better the personal connection with a product, the better your sales will be!

Handcrafted artisan jewelry will attract new customers to your store. Many jewelry artists have a loyal following who will seek you out in order to buy their favorite artists’ jewelry. Look to provide a range of products and prices. People generally look for that extra special piece once in a while; for anniversaries or weddings. Have some outstanding pieces for them and to draw people into your store. More reasonably priced jewelry will sell more often to more people. Pay special attention to what we call the “added value” jewelry – this is handmade jewelry that looks more expensive than it is. This is the impulse buy type of jewelry; who can say no to unique handcrafted jewelry that is affordable and you can wear it every day?

Copper Reflections artisans have been making unique jewelry for almost 25 years. They take pride in their jewelry designs and the quality of them. This unique jewelry craft was originated from an ancient art. Over the years Tony and Jennifer came up with so many jewelry designs and unique techniques which made this handmade artisan jewelry unique to them. To craft their jewelry they use embossing, etching, diamond cutting, patina, hand painting on jewelry pieces as well as many other techniques. Their handmade unique jewelry has been selling well in Canada and the United States for years because of their great quality, uniqueness and prices. Most people agree that Copper Reflections handcrafted artisan jewelry looks much more expensive than their actual prices. This could be an attribute as one of the key reasons to their success; uniqueness, quality and price.

Your goal is to make your customers come back time after time to check out your great selection of handmade jewelry. Whatever the occasion handcrafted jewelry will continue to keep them coming back for more!