Monday, February 6, 2012

How do You Describe Your Jewelry?

I often get stumped when it comes to assigning a description to my jewelry in ArtFire.  When I list an item in the database for selling, there are 4 categories I must assign.  The first categories are easy and straightforward:
1. handmade
2. jewelry
3. select earrings, necklace, pendant, or bracelet (based on the item)


Then comes #4...
4. ...has a long list of possibilities to choose from, and here is where I get perplexed....


For instance:


These are made of Czech glass crystals, a copper bead, one brass bead, hammered and twisted wired, brass kidney-shaped earwires with another brass bead on the earwire piece.

Here are some possibilities I  might choose for this Category:  
  • Beadwork
  • Crystal
  • Glass
  • Metalsmithed
  • Other Metals
  • Wire Wrapped

Which of these would you chose?   I'm really curious to know.   


In my opinion, they all make sense on some level, yet none seems to accurately describe the piece as a whole.

Which brings me to an even broader question...

Do you ever have people ask you what kind of jewelry you make?   I haven't come up with a good answer for that yet.  Have YOU?   I'd like to hear how you describe your "type" of jewelry!   For some, you may have a clear niche, for others (like myself), you may be floundering for words!   Either way, I'm interested to hear from you!   Please leave your comments!

Whatever words we use, we all do our own creative thing with some very cool results--so no need to let words get in the way!  I'm just a curious being!  :-)

Have a good week!

Sharyl

P.S.  If you go to "Sharyl's Jewelry" on Artfire, you can see the description I chose for these earrings.   I'm still considering a change though!  (The info appears just below the shipping information.)

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Image Credits:


Jewelry and photo by Sharyl, Jan 2012.


Question Mark Guy: http://www.wpclipart.com/blanks/callouts/eyeball_character/.cache/bubble_eyeball_character_question.png

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4 comments:

Carole M. said...

...hope you get some inspiring feedback. That #4 option would certainly have you scratching your head. They should offer one for "pretty much all of the above"!

Tanya said...

So, I had to go to your shop to see how you described your earrings. I love your description and "wire wrapped" makes sense to me. The earrings are stunning, also.

G.Dowell said...

This is a problem that I've had on similar pieces. I would say wire-wrapped as that is the dominate feature. The category "bead work" makes me think more on the seed bead peyote stitch pieces. For "metal-smithed" pieces, I think more of the torch and soldered pieces. It's confusing isn't it?

Sharyl said...

Thanks for your comments! Our thinking is in alignment here! Although I'm not sure I'm always consistent. Since this piece had quite a bit of wire, I tagged it as "wire-wrapped." If there were more beads and less wire, I've sometimes marked "bead work"--though uncomfortably for the reason Gayle mentions above.

It's not really "crystal," it's "glass crystal." So sometimes I've selected "glass" in these situations. I try to avoid "other" because it doesn't mean much at all if a person is searching. It's sort of like giving away your chance to be found, as I see it. On rare occasion I've also tried "other metal" but I think that's probably a loss too.

Thanks for your viewpoints!

Most likely there is a list of "definitions" for assigning these terms and I just haven't found it yet! :-)