Biz of Art - Sorting, Counting and Pricing Supplies

Well I finally found my way home from Tucson! Now I have to sort, count, price and store all my new treasures. This will take me several days. I actually enjoy this because I like to organize things. I can see where many of you would find this very tedious.

I added a penny in the picture below for scale.  These are teeny tiny stone beads!! Starting at the top of the pic they are turquoise, green jade, malachite, turquoise, lapis, turquoise, coral, brown jade, coral and coral. I have so many ideas on how to use these beauties.

But before I can do that I need to count them. Yes, count them!! I need to know how many I have, divide that into what I paid so that I can get a price per bead. I lay out the strings of the same type next to each other to see if they are the same length. If yes, then I only count one strand. If no...then I count them all!! Why do I need the price of each bead you ask? Because when I create a piece, I need to know the exact cost of the materials that went into the piece. This number gets included in my pricing formula.

In this pic are about a quarter of the stones I brought back. From top to bottom they are snakeskin jasper, green brecciated jasper, red creek jasper, red pietersite, fossilized coral, amazonite, and opalite. I have finished sorting, counting and pricing the stones and manged to squeeze them into my existing storage. I organize most by color. One more step with the stone beads is to research the healing and mystical qualities of each stone. This information gets put into a summary document and is then used to create the descriptive cards I include with every purchase.

Knowing the prices per stone of the materials I use really helps me when shopping. As I was browsing in Tucson I would take the price of a strand, count the stones per strand and then use my calculator to see if this was in my price point. Usually when the salesperson saw what I was up to they would run over with their calculator to assist. It was also good for negotiating! They were eager to make sales!

Next up are the metal beads and accents. Same process as the other items. I am itching to start creating with all these new baubles, but this is one of those many necessary tasks to my business that must be done before I start creating.