Natural Gemstone Pendants - handmade by me in the United Kingdom

NATURAL GEMSTONE PENDANT NECKLACES - HANDMADE BY ME (SUZY) IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

I make unique one-of-a-kind pendants using natural gemstones like Agate, Amethyst, Jasper and Quartz but at very affordable prices. If you want to be different from the crowd, then check out my pendants and other items. You will never see anyone wearing the same as you.

I design and make greeting cards too.

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Sunday 11 September 2011

Handmade or Handcrafted or just Assembled?


After my blog the other day about what to call my items – pendants or necklaces, and crystals or gemstones,  I have noticed a discussion going on on LinkedIn about what crafters can actually call “Handmade”.  There are some, lets say “warm”, discussions going on trying to distinguish what is handmade, handcrafted or just assembled.  People who make things from scratch are saying that only their items are handmade – but even they had to get the basic  materials from somewhere in the first place – did they dig it out of the ground etc. – they still have to buy components/ingredients.  Even a cake maker has to buy in the ingredients to make the cake.   It seems to have come to light that everyone has to buy in materials to make their items.   I know I don’t go off all over the world to dig out crystals and then take them home to cut, glaze and tumble.  I would have no idea where I would get the cotton, silk etc. to make my necklaces and as for acquiring the leather to make those necklaces – well forget it.  I would have to be able to make metal, silver etc. to make the chains plus the crimps and bails.

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Some people buy materials and do more basic things with them (as in when I make a pendant, someone makes a candle, someone knits a jumper), some people do a bit more with the bought in materials (as in when I design and make my beaded items, someone makes a fancy candle with shapes on top, someone designs their own pattern for the jumper they knit).  So it seems to me that everyone is making Handmade items if they are deciding which bits go with which, use different moulds or patterns etc. whether their item is intricate or plain, easy or hard – at the end of the day we all have to buy in things to make our items with and they are all changed from the original ingredients we bought to start with. 

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I can honestly say my items are unique in that every single crystal / gemstone I buy to make an item of jewellery with is different because they are all naturally different.  I could make 100 Sea Sediment pendants and if I kept them all plain and hung them all on a plain black leather thong they would all be and look different in that their natural patterning is different.  That is just the nature of my craft work.  But someone who buys in other basic products aren’t as lucky as I am as my crystals are a product of nature.  If someone knits a jumper to the same pattern with the same blue wool, they will all come out the same (LOL – well they should). 

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So would the people who are moaning about the others who they don’t feel are making handmade things say that the jumpers are not handmade because the knitter can make a production line out of them and make 100 identical jumpers?  To me they are still handmade – they are not mass produced in a factory.  I feel that anything that is made or changed in some way to make something else is a handmade item.  It doesn’t make it any more handmade just because someone picks up an old piece of wire at a car boot sale and reshapes it into a swirl, puts a piece of string through it and calls it a necklace, than someone who buys some wool from a shop and spends hours knitting a jumper to sell.  Even people who make an ornament out of wood have to buy the wood to start with – but someone could do a very plain carving and someone else would do a very detailed intricate carving taking 50 times as long – but both are handmade, and the intricate carver had the choice of making it plainer if they chose.  It doesn’t mean that the one who decided to spend a lot longer doing an intricate carving should run the other one down.  Does it also mean that if you made an item of wood on a lathe then it would not be classed as handmade?  Or a pot made in a potters wheel and in a kiln? 

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Ideally there should be a separate category for those that make things that are skill based that only a real crafter could do but it wouldn’t be called Handmade but something like Crafter would suit it.  Anyone can make a “Handmade” card identical to one they have seen if they bought the specific items to make it (usually too expensive unless bought in bulk) and could stick the parts on in the right places but surely the whole idea is that people buy handmade items that they would quite possibly like to make themselves but can’t quite see how, haven’t got the components and haven’t got the time.

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Surely the whole point of handmade is that you are buying something that someone has actually made and in its own way is unique but is certainly not made on a production line, as someone has gone to the trouble to make it using their own hands.  At the end of the day beauty is in the eye of the beholder and if someone likes your necklace or jumper they will buy it whether it is handmade or not the majority of the time.  If they are looking for something specifically handmade then whatever item they choose has not been manufactured by the millions in a factory, but the ingredients bought by someone who has turned them into something else.

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I think the people who moan the most about the name are the ones who put a lot of effort into what they make, and so resent other people calling what they make handmade.  We all choose what we want to make and into how much depth we want to go in making it.  So if they feel that their work is better / more involved / takes longer then they should charge the price according to the effort they have put in to making it.  Unfortunately a potential buyer may not see it that way and may not want to pay that much but that is what we all have to weigh up when we create something anyway – does the time and cost of components make it worthwhile?  We all get satisfaction in what we make because we created the end product.  But the value the consumer is willing to pay is another matter altogether.  If we put a lot of work into it we can either charge more money for it because of how long it took us or we can just be pleased with the item we have created as we enjoyed making it. 

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I know that from my experience it doesn’t matter how long it took me to bead an intricate necklace it wont sell for any more than a plainer one, as different people have different tastes and also the trends for things change.  At the moment I am finding that people are going for the minimalistic look in jewellery as well as in their homes so I am selling more of the plainer pendants / necklaces but things will change and people will go back to more intricate ones at some point.  The idea is to go with the flow and to make things your potential buyers want to buy.  And even though I buy in my components to make the items I happily class the finished product, however detailed it is, as handmade regardless of what some would call it.

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I would like to put one of the Handmade signs beside my blog and I may well do so at some point but I feel someone is bound to shout out “but they aren’t handmade”.  Maybe I should make a sign that says “Put Together By Me”.

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If we are being picky, perhaps we should call them “Handchanged” in that we all change either one thing, or many things, into a different item to sell.  Or even better “Person Made” as opposed to manufactured.  At the end of the day who cares – only the ones who are feeling wronged obviously – certainly not the potential customers!   I tend to think that customers know what Handmade means in general and if they are looking for Handmade items then it means they are looking for something different that is not manufactured in the thousands or more and generally available.  They want the personal touch of something that bit different.

What’s your view?   I would love to hear what “buyers” think so please leave a comment.

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Todays snippet of interest:

The first ever novel written on a typewriter was Tom Sawyer

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And todays little chuckle:


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