Research on the jewelry business

As per Emily Aston's Facebook request, here are pictures of the two bracelets I chain mailled. (No, these photos are not intended to look professional - they are me walking around the house at 9pm with my digicam.) Nothing remarkable about them, many jewelers will recognize the kits I used, but they were fun, and even better, I did each one in an evening. The lower one I did during a Critical Mass meeting last night (got to read the latest installments of novels by Vic Milan, Steve Stirling, Melinda Snodgrass, and Ian Tregillis - it was a great evening, and not real eventful for crits because their stuff is so disgustingly polished).

Er, anyway, I guess I was talking about jewelry. Today I researched jewelry business models, marketing, packaging, and how to apply for a UK business license. This no doubt sounds like jumping the gun given I've done all of two bracelets and designed nothing, but here's my mental process. 1) I was once a lawyer who worked with a lot of small businesses, so the research on business licenses didn't take all that long 2) I'm a speed reader, so reading a book on how to start a jewelry business cover to cover only took 2 hours (and I could skip a lot of the legal stuff).

But my real goal was 3) to not start another hobby, get really into it, wonder if I could make a few dollars back from it, and discover that the only way to do that is to devote my entire life to it which I can't do while raising a child and writing novels and thus wonder why I spent so much time getting into the hobby in the first place because it's a time and money sink. Six months from now, I may not care to make any more jewelry and all that research will just get filed away, but that research is less wasted time for me than all the learning I put into my hobbies. (Wasted may be too strong a word, but you get my drift.) It literally just took me one day to figure out how to apply for a UK business license, what structure of entity to create, and what the different markets are for jewelry. It'll take me *months* to make any headway in the actual craft of jewelry making.

Meanwhile, I also wrote today, though I need to go finish out my 2,000 words. My book is still rolling, which is wonderful. Working through the road trip was the right call; my next challenge is to keep working through Thanksgiving. Some holidays you need a break, some you can't afford one. This looks like the latter.