Weave got mail

Welcome back to Weave Got Maille!
This article is going to be slightly different and not focus so much on chainmaille as on jewelry and art creation in general.
At the store we get a lot of people asking us about how to charge for their work. This is not an easy question to answer. Many people just starting out only charge for materials used in their project. They completely ignore the time spent making the piece and learning the skills to create jewelry and art pieces. This is a NO-NO!
You have to consider the time spent making and learning in your final piece price. Imagine if you went to work and were paid for only half of the job! This would not make you happy at work and it shouldn’t make you happy in your art. If you consult Google there are many different articles, opinions and even formulas for pricing your work. For me I think basic is best, decide how much you want to pay yourself an hour and add in at least double the price of materials. You want to double the materials price because this is called the replacement cost, you can’t guarantee that you can get the materials at the same price the next time. Replacement cost helps you cover rising prices of materials and it helps cover costs of things like tools that you use in your work.
This basic formula looks like this (Material cost X 2) + (Hourly wage $ x hours) = basic price.
Some items may not take you that long to make. In this case it is a good idea to have a basic charge. For instance a pair of earrings only takes you 15 minutes but you decide that your base price is at least half an hour of your time. This makes it so that you get some items with a little extra cost padding for unforeseen expenses.
Now some of you are probably wondering how you decide what to pay yourself an hour. At least minimum wage to start! Once you get better at what you are doing and more confident charge more!
This may not seem important but it is. A lot of people aren’t just doing jewelry for fun they are making a living at it. When you decide to undervalue your items you undervalue everyone else along with you. Take pride in what you do and don’t make it harder on everyone else by under charging for your hard work.
Until next time!