You Should Sell That!
You Should Sell That!
Written by Elizabeth Liatsos
Photographed by Elizabeth Liatsos
There is a set of shelves in my bedroom at home that is full of supplies to make jewelry. I got it all for free from an aunt who was moving and needed to get rid of it. Her collection was made up of beads and wire in silver, gold, grey, brown, and blue. When I inherited her beads, the colors were honestly a bit drab. I scrounged through the Tupperware bins for days trying to find some pink, my favorite color. The only bits of pink I found were in bead mixtures jumbled in with other colors. I picked them out and used them up, until the mixtures ran pinkless. But with each pink, purple, and green bead, I built myself a collection of jewelry. I like thinking of it as wearable art, based on confidence and personality, and not on fitting into the greyscale world outside my bedroom.
I quickly learned how to make earrings, bracelets, necklaces, and suncatchers. There are only so many ways to wrap wire around beads and fasten them to hooks. I started wearing only my designs, all over my body, and displaying them in the space around me: from cherries made of glass and wire, to chunky hoop earrings that sparkled aquamarine or purple. Many people in my life have told me to sell my creations, and it would make quite a bit of money. I didn’t really want a business—it seemed so formal. My goal was to make jewelry for myself and my friends. I donated earrings and bracelets to raffles in my hometown for charity, but the pull towards monetary profit became strong. I was starting college and my minimum wage cashier job could only pay for so much tuition. It couldn’t hurt—everyone could use an extra buck or two.
So, after almost three years, I signed up for farmers markets and made a noticeable bit of money, enough to rival the paycheck I was getting every week from work. I was walking away from a market with an average of $100 a day. For sitting around at a park, that isn’t too bad. I dove deep into the business side of the craft, because I was told that’s how you become successful. Now, I have professional business cards, banners, and signage. The concepts of capitalism are so ingrained in our minds, it was all I knew how to follow.
When I make jewelry, I’m always shown the same images from customers who want a custom piece. It’s usually something off Pinterest, an image that three other customers have already asked for in the last week. I oblige and make it for them, even if the brown beads kill and bury my soul and the greys decompose into the ground. I like to tell my customers that my supplies aresecond hand, and that I’m keeping them from a landfill. I buy old necklaces and bracelets from thrift stores to reassemble with love. Some people turn their noses up at me, but the weird customers, the funky ones usually dressed in pastels and patterns instead of beige, buy a piece. I like the weird ones.
It stings a little extra now when I make a colorful pair of earrings that I adore, a pair that tug on my heart just a little more than the others. It sits in bright hues on my table for weeks, until I give up on trying to sell it and simply take it home as my own. I want to throw my passion into the world, but does the world want to catch it from me? I’m still not sure. Maybe some people do, but others only see the dollar signs in their eyes. The value of our lives, especially as artists, comes from how much money we make from our art. Only the so-called “great artists” matter, but these greats are the ones who have enough money for the public to care. They believe, and influence others, to think that the biggest compliment I can be given about my art is, “Wow, you should sell that!”
Suddenly, your hobby turns into a job and becomes undesirable. I loved how the pliers created callouses on my hands before, now they just ache. My excitement for my craft soon turned into questions every time I sat down with my cases of beads in front of me. What will sell well today? It is no longer important whether a pair of earrings brings me joy or if the suncatcher creates the perfect spread of rainbows on my wall. Now, it has to appeal to the masses, and unfortunately, the masses can be a bit boring.
When I meet new people, they tend to compliment my jewelry. Whatever earrings I’ve chosen to wear today are unlike anything they’ve seen before. I tell them, “Thank you, I made them!” The stranger smiles at me, marvels at how talented I am, I blush, and they close the conversation with “You should sell that.”