This is another inflammatory topic, I know. To be clear, I don't object to beading in the abstract. Beads are certainly pretty, I agree. And those who want to create their own beaded necklaces should certainly feel free to do so. But as a craft, beading has two things working against it.
Problem #1: A lot of people mistake it for a job.
Beading is super popular, although perhaps not as much now as it was about ten years ago. At one point, beading was being pushed as a great way for people (particularly stay-at-home moms) to make an income. Create your own jewelry! String a bunch of pretty things together and sell them for a 500 percent mark-up over cost! What could go wrong?
Well, a lot of things.
First of all, everyone's beaded jewelry looks pretty much the same. If you've seen one chunky beaded necklace strung with quartz beads and silver accents, you've seen them all.
Second of all, for those styles which actually do gain traction in the marketplace, the Asian sweatshop factories can churn them out for pennies on the dollar. Given the choice, most people would probably buy the $5 necklace at Target over a nearly identical $75 necklace on Etsy or at a crafts fair.
At the height of the beading craze, I worked for a company that provided services to eBay sellers. The number of women who thought they were going to strike it rich selling their (indistinguishable from everyone else's) hand-strung necklaces on eBay was heartbreaking. Needless to say, reality crushed their spirits like so many bugs on a windshield. It was hard to watch.
Problem #2: A lot of people mistake "buying beads" for "making jewelry."
I totally get this. Just thinking about a bead store makes my fingers twitch, Gollum-like, at the thought of all the pretty things. It's almost impossible to restrain yourself at a bead store, which is why most people who are into beading have roughly 10,000,000 times more beads than they will ever actually use to make jewelry.
Image courtesy Flickr/Michelle Littlefield
1 comments