Repressed artistic tendencies

If I wasn't making jewelry, I'd be a letterpress artist. I know that sounds a little like saying, "If I didn't train lions, I'd train tigers." They're both art, both very detail-oriented. But the processes are not the same at all. Letterpress exercises a different artistic muscle. Flexing it gives me a thrill, a special endorphin rush. I'm happy with where I ended up, but letterpress holds a special place in my heart.

Letterpress is the old method of publishing -- a weighted machine squeezes type against paper when hand-cranked. I first discovered it in college. One of my journalism professors invited us over to his place for an end-of-the-semester celebration, and in his garage he had an old hand-crank letterpress used to publish some newspaper many moons ago. I was enthralled. He liked to crank out little newsletters, but pawing through his type I saw the potential for something that was cool.

Then, several years later, my future husband and I were walking to work in downtown D.C. one day when we were stopped in our tracks by a pop-up gallery at the corner of 14th and G. Some of the art was reminiscent of outsider art, which we love, but it looked like it was woodblock prints. We had discovered Yee-Haw Industrial Letterpress, and we (and our bank account) would never be the same.

Our biggest Yee-Haw splurge: The Johnny Cash fine art
print hangs above our fireplace.
Pizza delivery boys covet it.

We now have many, many letterpress artists we love, but I believe Yee-Haw will eventually be on every wall of our house. Some rooms have two or more Yee-Haw prints. My husband gave me a Yee-Haw print as a wedding gift.  We have visited them at their studio in Knoxville, TN, twice. Adam at Yee-Haw made our daughter's birth announcement. I visit the Yee-Haw booth at Merlefest before I even see a show. I took a multi-day letterpress workshop with the founders of Yee-Haw, Kevin Bradley and Julie Belcher. Kevin introduced us to our favorite record store in Knoxville. We know he wears alarming argyle knee-high socks. We obviously have an unhealthy relationship with Yee-Haw.

But sometimes that's how you discover your interests (letterpress, stalking). I figured I could make letterpress art, too. My husband and sister began poking around and found Pyramid Atlantic in Silver Spring, MD. Pyramid Atlantic is an arts center dedicated to papermaking and printmaking. This means they have several presses, including my big babies: two Vandercook presses. Swoon! Presses have their own personalities, and these guys were no different. They flirted with me. I attended a one-night workshop to learn how to use the suckers, and then it suddenly became My Thing. I was home all day every day with a baby and needed a break -- just a little something to get me out and re-establish who I was outside of being a mom. Apparently, who I was was an ink monkey. I was soon going once a week, setting type into designs and printing them. There was a little gang of us who went religiously. We didn't talk too much about life outside that room. I think it was an escape for all of us, not just me.

One of the woodblock prints I carved and pressed
at a workshop with Yee-Haw's founders (an
homage to the 14th Street of my youth).

Letterpress is not easy. It can take hours and hours and therefore days to set the type in the design you want. And it has to be backward.  Or you can carve your design into wood and press that, but that carved design also has to be backward.  If you want two or more colors, you have to make two or more layouts or carvings.  Plus you have to understand how a 100-year-old machine works. Sometimes the Vandercook won't give you good pressure no matter what you do. Sometimes it takes forever to line your type and paper up. Sometimes the ink will not spread into a certain spot no matter how hard you try. It takes quite awhile to clean the press afterward. I loved every minute of it.

But the trip to Pyramid Atlantic was a long one -- almost an hour each way, one way in rush-hour traffic. When we moved even further south, I gave it up. I miss it. I'd love to have a letterpress here at home I could play with. But even if I could afford one, it would mean giving up the garage (big, heavy presses need to sit on a concrete slab). After years of exposing my vehicle (and myself) to the elements, I like having a garage for its intended purposes. I'm not ready to give it up. So I decided it was time to rededicate myself to jewelry. But I think of letterpress often. How can I not, with Yee-Haw in every room? Maybe one day I'll find a little tabletop press for stationary. I can make little cards, silly gift tags, small prints for friends. I've even figured out a way I could marry my love of jewelry and letterpress. I think there's a chance it could happen. It took many years to achieve my metalsmithing dreams, but I did. I don't think I need to give up on letterpress just yet.

What am I worth?

For me, the hardest part of opening a jewelry shop on Etsy was figuring out prices.  You don't have to go it on your own if you don't want to.  There are several crafting-industry formulas for pricing work, but I like this one:

Cost price (materials + labor) x 2 = wholesale price

Wholesale price x 2 = retail price

It's simple.  Well, it SEEMS like it's simple.  Calculating the cost of your materials is easy enough.  But there's that little part called "labor."  How the hell do you figure out labor?  What do you pay yourself per hour?  I used to be a salaried professional, but it worked out to more than $30/hour.  People love handmade art, but they don't love it at $30+ an hour.  However, you don't want to only give yourself $10/hour -- you probably could do better at Mickey D's.  (I'm basing this on the "I'd be a manager in a few weeks" McDonald's theory, not the "I'd be the disgruntled employee stuck in burger assembly forever" McDonald's theory.)

One of my pieces that took a loooong time.

And let's talk about hours.  I'm fairly new to metalsmithing.  I've only been doing it for two years.  In many ways, I'm still learning.  Certain pieces I can crank out quickly.  But if you see something fairly detailed in my shop, it took me MANY hours (days) to make it.  Add in my obsessive-compulsive need to file, file, file the metal, and we're talking an outrageous labor tally for a little ol' necklace.

So where does that leave you?  Guessing, that's where.  I slapped some prices on my jewelry, half using the formula and half winging it.  I was happy with it -- and ignoring the fact I was operating at a financial loss -- until I was questioned by some friends who have been metalsmiths much longer than I have.  I told them my prices and they were incredulous.  They told me I was selling myself way short.  "Not everyone is a metalsmith," they reminded me.  Then they made some pricing suggestions.

These suggestions were CRAZY.  Some of them doubled my original price!  I liked my pieces, I thought they were good -- but even I couldn't afford some of them at these prices.  So where does that leave my friends who like my work?  And that brings you to two dirty little truths of being an artisan:  You can't afford your own stuff, and you can't necessarily sell to your friends.  Especially if you used to be a journalist, because that means a lot of your friends are poor.  Or laid off.  Or both.

I spent a lot of time thinking about what my metalsmith friends had said.  In the end, I had to remind myself I'm trying to move beyond this being a hobby.  I wanted to open a business and try to make a living off my work.  I thought of Zales.  People don't waltz into Zales expecting to get a quality piece of jewelry for $35.  Now, I don't make what Zales makes.  But they don't make handcrafted, one-of-a-kind jewelry like I do.  There's value in that.

We'll see what happens.  It's way too early to know what kind of success I'll have -- my store has only been open for four days.  The sales I have made remind me that I have a skill and people will pay for that skill if it's done well.  As my skills evolve, "done well" will have different meanings.  So pricing my jewelry will be an ever-evolving process.  That means it's possible that it'll always be hard for me to do.  But I can live with that, because it means I'll still be in business selling jewelry.

Here's my site:  www.slathered.etsy.com 

(P.S. I realize this doesn't even get into wholesale vs. retail prices.  I'll get into that some other time -- that's a whole other pricing debate that I can't mentally handle right now.)

Becoming a metalsmith

Becoming a metalsmith has been a long process for me.  I first started beading jewelry COUGH! COUGH! years ago, when I was in college.  My mom still wears some of the jewelry I made then, bless her.  I got better at beading over the years.  I made wedding jewelry for some people.  But I wanted to do more, and metalsmithing raised my curiosity.  It's not something you can easily learn on your own, though, unless you don't mind losing some fingers.  Plus, I had a full-time job as a newspaper editor.  The hours could be long and unpredictable, making it hard to take a class.  But I finally found enough stability that I was ready to start learning ...


And then I got pregnant.  There's no rule that says you can't learn metalsmithing while pregnant, but no one in their right mind is going to let you sign up.  You are Potential Lawsuit #1.  You breathe in all kinds of toxic fumes and dust while working with metal -- no one's going to take the risk of a miscarriage on their watch.  Or a two-headed kid with webbed fingers.


So I put it off for a couple more years.  A baby and a blowtorch are not the best match.  But once my daughter started preschool, I knew it was time.  And we had conveniently moved close to Lorton Workhouse, which offered metalsmithing classes.


It didn't go smoothly at first.  Me and soldering, we aren't best friends.  I expected skill to immediately shine down on me.  This is where the violin and I went wrong back in fourth grade.  I wanted to be able to play "Flight of the Bumblebees" instantly, but I couldn't.  It was the same with soldering.  My metals wouldn't fuse.  There were tears.  But this time I persevered, and it got better. 

It's been almost two years since I took that first class, and I'm ready to move on again.  I left journalism after I had my daughter, and she started full-time school in September.  It's time to start working again.  So I'm opening a jewelry store on Etsy in a few minutes.  All of the pieces were made by me.  I'm excited, but I also feel like I'm going to throw up a little.  Most good things are like that, I think.  Talking about it calms me down some.  So I'm going to talk about it some here.  Every few days I'll write about metalsmithing and making jewelry, and real life will probably get mixed in.  You should check it out.  There are worse ways to spend 10 minutes.

And check out my Etsy site:  www.slathered.etsy.com   It's been a long time coming!